


Outro

by evieeden



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bucky Barnes Has PTSD, Canon-Typical Violence, Captain America Big Bang 2018 | cabigbang, M/M, Minor Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Not Captain America: The First Avenger Compliant, Not Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Past Bucky Barnes/Natasha Romanov, Past Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-09 18:40:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 28,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16455242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evieeden/pseuds/evieeden
Summary: Bucky was all ready to follow that little guy from Brooklyn into the jaws of death as a Howling Commando when Steve makes a decision that changes the course of Bucky's future forever.When Steve is recovered from the ice by SHIELD, Bucky finds himself torn between being there for his best friend and the man he’s secretly loved for years, and struggling with the resentment he’s felt towards Steve since that fateful choice.Written for the Captain America Big Bang.





	1. I'm the king

**Author's Note:**

  * For [noirhound](https://archiveofourown.org/users/noirhound/gifts).



> So here's my contribution towards the Captain America Big Bang, which I'm so happy to both have been a part of and that I'm even more happy to have clawed my way through.
> 
> Throughout it all, has been the lovely casketofsunflowers/buchahnans, who was matched with me and has completed the amazing art to accompany this fic, but who has also inadvertently been an amazing sounding board and source of support. I'm very grateful for all your help, Kit, and for the beautiful beautiful artwork that you have produced to accompany this story. Go team 121!
> 
> I'd also like to thank the wonderful Bo, who has been my partner in crime for absolute years, and who very kindly (and at time, confusedly) beta'd this fic for me. She is a superstar and any mistakes in this fic that are left are all my own.
> 
> This has been a fantastic experience writing a story that I've had in my head for a while and although it's ended up being miles more angsty than I intended (something I feel like I say for every fic I've ever written) I still hope you stay with me through this slow-burner.

**All the amazing artwork for this fic can be found on @buchahnans tumblr page for this fic:<https://buchahnans.tumblr.com/tagged/Outro>**

 

**2011**

He was sat on his sofa, cigarette in hand, staring blankly at a TV infomercial when he found out. The scraping of a boot on the windowsill alerting him that he was along no longer. His mouth curled up in a mocking smile before he grabbed the hand of the person sneaking up behind him and twisted them one-handed over his shoulder and onto the floor where he slammed his foot down on their stomach to pin them in place.

Bucky’s attacker wiggled in place, trying to get out of his grip without doing something like kicking him in the face, before stilling with a pout.

“Very sloppy, Spiderling,” he drawled, “Unless I was meant to hear you coming from a mile off, of course.”

Natalia scowled at him from her prone position and he pressed his boot down that little bit harder before relenting. She scrambled to her feet – rather ungracefully for her – and he thought she allowed that little bit of the mask to slip just to gain the advantage of being on her feet that half a second faster.

“You were meant to hear me.”

Bucky rolled his eyes and this seemed to frustrate Natalia more than anything else.

“You were!” she insisted.

He sat back again and took a drag from the lit cigarette, not answering. Natalia scowled again before stomping over to the worn armchair in the corner of the room and perching on the edge, ready to flee or fight at any moment.

Sometimes they truly brought out the worst in each other.

He tried a more conciliatory tone. “How’s Tony Stark doing? Still kicking I take it?”

She shot him a sharp look. “How would I know?”

“Oh come on.” He picked up one of the folders littering the coffee table and tossed it towards her. “Trouble in Monaco and then the Stark Expo. A mysterious redhead who’s not Pepper Potts suddenly by his side.” She gave the folder a perfunctory look. “Plus I heard you did some damage at Hammer Industries during the same night.”

He didn’t explain that he hadn’t got all of that from his careful weekly dig into SHIELD’s records, but had attended the Expo himself on the night of Hammer’s exhibition and seen her attending with the new Stark Industries CEO. It was a throwback to the kid he had been before he left for war where science was something amazing and incredible, that could help people and change the future for the better. Not something that could infest and destroy.

Barring a decade or two, he had religiously attended every Stark Expo since 1943 and that wasn’t going to change, even though a different Stark was running the show nowadays.

He had shielded a woman and her daughter with his arm when the drones attacked and glass shattered everywhere, but resigned himself to helping civilians rather than fighting back, which would have drawn far too much unwanted attention. It was then that he had caught a glimpse of Natalia leaving in a hurry and had followed from a safe distance.

Bucky knew that she was more than capable of taking care of herself, but Stark and Rhodes seemed to be handling things themselves at the Expo and he didn’t like to think of her going into an unknown situation without backup.

Stark’s bodyguard didn’t count.

She had been fine. Part of him knew that she would be. But it never hurt to be there…just in case.

He was still good enough to watch someone’s back, even if they didn’t need it.

“Stark’s…fine,” she conceded begrudgingly. “Arc reactor’s all sorted now, so barring his own stupidity, he should live.”

Bucky would never have shown it, but he was pleased to hear that Stark was all right. The boy’s father had worked with Peggy to help him through the years and Bucky was trying his best to repay the kindness by keeping an eye on his only progeny. Not that Stark Junior was actually letting him be of any use, flying around, doing his best to get himself killed in public.

“Good.” He didn’t feel the need to say any more than that on the subject, so he not so subtly switched it. “How was Harlem?”

Natasha slumped further into her chair. “You really need to stop digging around in SHIELD’s files. One day they’re going to catch you.”

Bucky shrugged. “If they didn’t want me to see what they were up to then they wouldn’t have made it so easy for me to access.”

Natasha hummed noncommittally, examining her nails.

He smoked silently, tapping the cigarette against an ashtray every once in a while.

Eventually, curiosity got the better of him. “Why are you here, Natashenka? I’m assuming this isn’t a social call.”

She met his eyes. “And why would you assume that?”

“Stop bullshitting me, darling.” He leaned forward. “You wanna piss someone off, you got Barton and Coulson for that. I ain’t got time for your games.”

For once, Natasha looked almost hesitant – it wasn’t a look that sat right on her and it raised his hackles. His hand crept automatically, unbidden, towards the knife he kept holstered in his pants’ leg. Natasha carefully stood up and backed away. She had been around on one-too-many occasions when he had lost control and knew better than to get too close when he was stressed. Of course, it didn’t help that _she_ was currently the cause of his stress.

“There’s information…that Fury doesn’t want you to have.”

Bucky’s shoulders relaxed a fraction. “More of Fury’s secrets. What a surprise.” He forced his hand back to the arm of the sofa and raised the cigarette for another shaky drag. God, he hated that the nicotine didn’t really do anything for him anymore, although he supposed the familiarity of it was comforting if nothing else. He directed his words at Natasha. “I guess I’ll come up across them sometime later then.” He nodded his head towards the laptop on the kitchen island.

“Not this you won’t.” Natasha took a deep breath. “Fury’s got this whole thing on lockdown. Strictly need to know, no electronic records.” She tilted her head towards Bucky. “You really thought he didn’t know you were rifling?”

He shrugged. “I really didn’t care. Fury can have his secrets as long as none of them come back to bite me on the ass. That’s all I’m concerned about… you should know that.”

“You should be concerned about this.” She crept forward lightly on the balls of her feet – her ballet training never more evident. “He’s keeping information that affects you.”

Something about her tone made Bucky jerk his head sharply towards her.

“Tell me.”

“James… Yasha…” She knelt in front of him and put her hands on his knees. Her face was open for once. Her tone reassuring. It immediately put him on edge. “They found him.”

He couldn’t compute. “Found who?”

“They found _him_ ,” she repeated. Bucky blinked at her.

Natasha continued. “Obviously Stark Industries still does a sweep every year, per Howard Stark’s instructions, but this wasn’t them. It was a military training operation. They came across the ship, the Valkyrie, and…”

Bucky’s vision began to white out as words he’d never thought to hear before came spilling out of Natasha’s mouth. Things he’d hoped for, prayed for, seventy years ago, but had long since been relegated to the ashes.

“…when they assessed the body, they found that he still had a heartbeat, even after all this time. The ice must have lowered…”

“Stop.” It was barely a whisper.

“…they’ve got him in a medical centre in Manhattan. He hasn’t woken up yet, but they think it’ll happen in the next few days…”

“Stop!” It was louder, harder.

Natasha cut herself off mid-word.

“You’re lying,” he bit out.

He stared down at her, hating her in that moment. She was staring up at him, a calm, blank look on her face, telling him that Steve, his best friend, his…, was alive. It was too much. He couldn’t breathe…couldn’t think…

“You’re lying,” he said again. Firmer this time.

“I’m not.” Natasha’s voice was quiet but sure. “They found Captain America – Steve Rogers – alive. They’re keeping him medicated while they reverse the involuntary cryonics procedure.” She shook his knees. “He’s alive, Yasha.”

Bucky couldn’t move, couldn’t tear his eyes away from her face. On the one hand, he knew that she was such a skilled liar that he wouldn’t be able to find any ticks that indicated whether or not she was telling the truth – and who knew what sick reasons Fury might have to want to play such a game. On the other hand, he wanted it to be real so badly.

Steve – _alive_. Not dead. Returned from the war after all, albeit seventy years too late.

There was a third voice too that spoke up in the back of Bucky’s mind. A tiny voice of resentment that he had managed to squash down after years of bitterness, which now threatened to rise again.

He needed time to think. He needed to assess the situation.

He needed Natasha to get out of there before he lost it and did something he would regret later.

“Go.”

Natasha froze. “James?”

“Go.” His voice was short. Clipped. “Get out. Now.”

She backed away from him slowly, eyes on his face, never looking away. He appreciated her caution, but the fact that she was forced to show it around him in the first place was like a red rag to a bull.

“Get out!”

Natasha took him at his word, fleeing out the way she had come in, but not before dropping a piece of paper on the floor before she left. “Take care, Yasha.”

He sat there, his fists clenching and unclenching repeatedly, before pushing himself to his feet to pace frantically from one side of the apartment to the other. His mind was blank. It wasn’t until he felt a sudden flare of heat against his fingers that he realised he had crushed the end of his cigarette in his hand. Scowling, he dropped the ruined cigarette in the ashtray and brushed his and off on his pants. It stung, but he knew from experience that the pain would be momentary.

Unlike the pain from learning that Steve…

He should be happy, should be celebrating, should be overwhelmed with joy that the heartbreak he had felt over his best friend’s death for seventy years was over.

Instead, he just felt numb.

Over the years, he had dreamed about his body being recovered from that stupid, fucking plane. He had thought that it would mean closure, that everyone left behind would finally be able to lay him to rest – properly this time, near family, not in that stupid farce of a monument up in Arlington.

He would be able to finally make his peace with the ghost that haunted him everywhere he went.

After all, it was a lot easier to forgive a dead man, than a living one.

Even as reality set in, as his brain began to compute that it was real, Steve was alive – after all, Natalia knew better than to lie to him, especially about this – he could feel the old bitterness towards the man beginning to sink back in.

It made him feel sick, like someone had spun him around and then left him to wobble precariously on the ground, which was no longer solid beneath him.

Bucky let his legs collapse underneath him and as he fell, he heard the crumple of paper beneath his knee.

 _First floor. West side. Third room from the left._ Natasha’s note. He reminded himself to apologise to her later, but he thought, in this at least, that she would understand better than most.

Bucky considered his options.

If Steve really was alive then of course Fury would be operating strictly on a need-to-know basis. It was a coup of the highest order and as soon as the man was back to full health, they would be trying to recruit him to SHIELD. He was a valuable asset strategically and in terms of man-power and with his war record and reputation, it would solve a lot of their image problems.

In order to do that though, they would need to keep him isolated. Make him believe that this was the only reasonable option available to him, especially in the confusion of waking up seventy years later.

God, it made Bucky’s heart hurt to think of him like that, with no-one he actually cared about around looking out for him, watching his back.

If Bucky was there though… Well, who knows what would happen then.

He’d like to think he could take one look at Steve and they would immediately go back to how they were before the war ruined everything. But too much had happened since then, both to Steve and himself.

All in all, that left option number two, which really was the only course of action Bucky could even consider right now: see if Romanova was right.

Nothing could be decided until he saw Steve with his own two eyes. Saw him breathing. Heard his heart beating.

Then he would be able to decide. Then he would be able to believe.

Arming himself, he shrugged into his jacket and grabbed his helmet. Briefly considering, he grabbed another two knives from where they were concealed behind the coat rack.

It never hurt to be unprepared…especially when he had no idea what he was walking into.


	2. Of my own land

**2011**

He wasn’t surprised, although he was slightly disappointed, to find that sneaking undetected into SHIELD was still as easy as ever.

As one of the world’s foremost intelligence agencies, one would hope that they would have slightly better security, especially given all the sensitive information they had lying around. As it was, he was able to bypass most of the security, flit from one camera blind spot to another and then disappear into the vents before anyone notice the random guy in black armour hanging around and started asking questions.

He supposed he should also be thanking Barton for making the inhabitants of this particular base so blasé about strange noises and the possibility of intruders in the walls.

It took two minutes from entry into the building to reach the holding cell where they were stashing Rogers, exactly where Natalia had said it would be.

Of course, they probably wouldn’t describe it as a holding cell. It had a bed and some dressers, a radio playing a baseball game that he and Steve had attended about two years before he headed out to the European Theatre, and a lovely, fake view of the city streets outside. It was carefully designed to calm, to be familiar to a man whose last memory was of 1945.

It was also an elaborately constructed trap.

To be honest, Bucky would be disappointed in Steve if he couldn’t see that the minute he woke up. But then, he always had expected more from him than anyone else.

And there he was, like Sleeping Beauty himself, and the sight of him was like a punch to the gut, stealing the breath from his body and leaving him to flounder at the sight of his best friend, alive, living, breathing, not dead.

Bucky put his hand up to the glass of the one-way mirror as if he could reach through and touch Steve himself, but he didn’t move closer. Didn’t try to get into the room. Didn’t try to touch the Steve that was lying there on the bed, pristine, completely untouched by everything around him.

But he wasn’t, was he? Untouched?

Dying, even if it wasn’t permanent, left a mark on your soul that was hard to shake off. Bucky knew that better than most.

Still, he couldn’t help but take in every perfect detail: the wave of his neatly combed hair, the curve of his nose that Bucky had tried so hard to set straight after every time it got broken in a fight, his pink lips. He drank the sight of him in.

Steve was alive. He was alive and he was in front of Bucky and if Bucky wanted, he could reach out, just reach out to him, and join in with the charade in that cell. Pretend it was still ’44 and that the Nazis were the worst things the world ever produced, pretend that he and Steve only had to make it back from the war and then everything could be the same again, pretend that Azzano and Erskine and Schmidt and super soldiers were just a bad dream that he’d had once.

But the man lying there was not the same one that Bucky saw last. He had seen war – something Bucky had longed that he never would – and it had taken its toll. Bucky could see the worry lines beginning to form around Steve’s eyes, the crease in his forehead, the way he appeared slightly bigger and more imposing than he ever had been while Bucky knew him.

No, he couldn’t pretend. He was grateful that Steve was alive and well, like a miracle from the blue, but he couldn’t pretend.

His hand dropped from the glass and he stared blankly ahead, trying to decipher the mix of emotions bombarding his senses. Trying not to just curl up in a ball and wail like a baby.

Not that he would ever express emotion in front of the man who was approaching. Bucky was upset, not suicidal. He wasn’t about to give SHIELD any more leverage over him than they already had.

“Our security officers told me there’d been a breach in this room. Captain Rogers is a hero to many of our agents; there were no shortage of people who were ready to come down and beat your ass.”

Bucky didn’t take his eyes off the man in front of him. It had the added advantage that he could see the head of SHIELD approaching in the reflection of the glass. “It’s nice that they thought they could succeed.”

“You’re still a ghost story to pretty much everyone. Most of our agents don’t even know you exist. Those who know of you, don’t believe half the stories.”

Bucky snorted. “Well that’s comforting.”

Fury came and stood next to him – within touching distance which Bucky thought was rather brave of him considering the last time they had met, Bucky had broken his arm and then tried to garrotte him – and stared into the room.

“How do you like our set up?”

Bucky side-eyed him. “He’s never going to believe it.”

“So it’s definitely him then?”

“Don’t tell me you haven’t already run all the DNA tests you could get your hands on.”

Fury almost smiled. “Nothing like ID from a witness though.”

“I’m a witness now?”

“Would you rather be a fugitive?”

“I’d rather know what the hell you think you’re doing.”

Fury sighed, like Bucky was deliberately being difficult. “It was suggested by our psychologist that waking up seventy years in the future might prove too much of a shock for the Captain. This scenario was proposed so that we can enable him to get used to being alive and recover from the shock being frozen has had on his body before we let him know how much time had passed, rather than introducing that subject before he has recovered.” Fury looked towards him. “To minimise any distress, I believe this is most sound option.”

Bucky barely resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

“You don’t agree?”

That made him smile. “I get a choice in this?”

“You could.” Fury just couldn’t resist. “If you just joined…”

“No!” Bucky cut him off, his voice curt. “We’ve had this conversation.”

“Twenty years ago.”

“The time is irrelevant, the answer’s the same.”

“Fair enough.” Fury nodded. “You do know you can’t just walk in here whenever you choose though. There are rules, particularly for non-agency staff.”

Bucky shrugged. “So throw me out.”

“And stop you from seeing Captain Rogers?”

Bucky forced himself to turn away from the farce of the room. He met Fury’s eyes, unwavering. “I’ve seen him. I’m done.”

Fury blinked. It was the first time Bucky had ever seen him vaguely taken aback, but he recovered quickly. “Fair enough.” He paused. “So I take it I can reassure the security team that Captain Rogers won’t be receiving anymore unauthorised visits or would you like your name on the guest list?”

Bucky almost laughed at the not-so-subtle fishing. Besides, Fury knew that if Bucky wanted to get to that room, there wasn’t an agent in the building – short of Natalia – who could stop him. He took one last look at Steve lying there on the bed, breathing in the realisation that was only just beginning to set in that this was real and happening, and then turned away, forcing his face into its customary blank mask before Fury looked too closely.

“I’ll see you around, Nick.”

The other man grunted. “Not if I can help it.”

Bucky smiled – a hard, fake thing that he only dragged out nowadays for conversations like these – and headed for the door. He couldn’t resist taking a parting shot before leaving though.

“He’s never going to believe it when he wakes up.” He gestured back towards the fake room, the painted window and the radio where the baseball game had wound back to the beginning to re-play again. His eyes got caught on the still figure lying in the middle of it all before he forcibly looked away. “And you’re going to regret trying to deceive him.”

Fury opened his mouth to reply, but Bucky had already left the room. He ignored the tall, stern-faced woman waiting outside – _Maria Hill, deputy director, no threat_ – and disappeared into one of the vents in front of her, not bothering to hide what he was doing.

He nearly laughed at her muttered curse, “Fucking Barton!” before he re-trod his path back outside the building.

The building inside which Steve was alive.

Bucky zig-zagged through Manhattan, doubling back on himself, turning down blind alleys, scaling up walls and across rooftops before jumping back down to ground level again.

He moved quickly. He wanted to get as far away from that place as possible, get far away from Steve – who was alive, who would have expectations of Bucky if he knew _he_ was alive too – and have either a good cry or destroy whatever he got his hands on. He also wanted to get as far away from SHIELD as possible.

He knew he was mostly safe from the intelligence agency, they had promised him that at least, but his safety was predominantly guaranteed by a few trustworthy people and he didn’t actually trust them…not fully anyway.

So he twisted and turned and ran his way around the neighbourhood for a while, until he was completely sure that not even the best tail that Fury could produce would be able to track his whereabouts and grabbed his motorbike from where he had left it in a narrow alley, heading out towards the garage unit where he stored his vehicles. He needed to get out of the city and process what he had just seen. He needed to be able to let go of everything he was feeling because his adrenaline was sky-high and he was sure that if he hadn’t been him, then he would currently be suffering a heart-attack.

Bucky parked the bike in another alleyway and then snuck around the back of the garages, letting himself in through the narrow grate at the top of the wall.

He looked at his options. Using one of his other bikes would be faster, but in the end he chose one of his cars with tinted windows. He would be able to sleep in it if he got stuck out overnight and it was more discreet than his Ducati.

He looked at his watch.

If he left the city now, he would hopefully miss rush hour and get to his destination before it was too late. Although he kind of thought it was already probably too late.

Grabbing a bag of supplies he had stashed behind the counter, Bucky threw it in the car, slid into the driver’s seat and gunned it out of the garage as fast as possible.

He needed to talk to someone. Someone who knew about his past with Steve, someone who knew who he was and what he’d done. Someone who understood that while Steve being found alive was miraculous, it wasn’t necessarily going to send him into cartwheels.

Someone who was one of the 4 people in the world he actually _did_ trust.

Bucky arrived in DC a little after dinner, changed into his civilian clothes, and immediately headed to the familiar, old house – some place certainly nicer than anything he was sure he could afford. Ducking other visitors and residents was an easy enough job – nothing a baseball cap and ducking his head when he had to leave one of the security camera blind spots couldn’t cope with – and then he was there.

He knocked on the door lightly, not wanting to disturb the resident inside if they were tired.

“Come in.”

He slid through the door, closing it silently behind him, and then pulled the cap off, attempting to straighten himself up a bit.

Bucky Barnes before the war was vain and didn’t care whether people knew or not. Bucky Barnes now liked to pretend he didn’t care.

He stepped around the patterned sofa in the middle of the room and plastered his most charming smile on.

“Good evening, Peg. How’ve you been?”

Crystal-clear, sharp eyes met him, assessing. “Well, well, Sergeant Barnes.” Her lips were still painted as red as they were the first time he had ever met her. “You look like you could use a sit down and a cup of tea.”

He sat.


	3. Facing tempests of dust

**1943**

The first time Bucky Barnes met Peggy Carter he was blown away by her.

Sure Steve had chatted about her on the long walk back to camp – recounting how he had discovered Bucky was missing, presumed dead, and no-one apart from Steve had wanted to mount a rescue attempt, but that Steve’s friends Agent Carter and Howard Stark ( _Howard Stark!_ ) had listened and helped him cross over the border into enemy territory – but in the confusion over the whole thing, and the fact that Bucky still felt like his ear drums were shattered from the punishment his captors had dished out four days earlier, he somehow had missed the fact that Agent Carter – the _wonderfully competent_ Agent Carter – was a dame.

He was sure Steve hadn’t mentioned that part.

So he marched into camp at Steve’s side, trying to hide so badly that all his body wanted to do was find a small, dark place, curl up and shake out the horrors of what had happened to him.

He couldn’t that in front of Steve though. Not like this and especially not now.

Bucky had successfully hidden every sniffle, headache, hangover and sign of stress when they had lived together back in Brooklyn. Steve had been almost permanently unwell and in the few years after his mother’s death and before Bucky had shipped out, it had seemed that he was spiralling further and further into some kind of permanent invalidity. His body had been too weak for the strength in his mind and his heart and it had been left to Bucky to hold them both together. Weakness was to be avoided lest Steve began to feel any more guilt over something he couldn’t help than he already was.

Back then he had to look strong, had to not fall apart, simply because he was the only thing standing between them and abject poverty.

Marching into that camp, he had to appear strong simply because if he didn’t he thought he would just start wailing and never stop. He would wail over the men he tried so hard to save out there on the front. He would wail over the pain and torment – something he was trying so hard to push to the back of his mind and not think about – that he had suffered the instant the guards outside his cell in Azzano had clocked that the pneumonia sweeping like wildfire around the factory had claimed him as another victim. And, rather selfishly, he would wail over his best friend, whom he had left stewing, but safe, back home in Brooklyn who had now appeared before him, healthy and almost gleeful about going into combat, but in a body and with mannerisms he didn’t recognise anymore.

It was like looking at a stranger.

And while Bucky thought he should feel grateful that Steve cared about him enough that he had dropped everything, committed treason even, to come and rescue him from that hell-hole, he just couldn’t shake the abject wrongness of it that had settled into his bones.

So it was with gritted teeth – God, his jaw hurt – and a fake smile (that Steve had always been able to see through before) that Bucky marched into camp next to his new, strange best friend. The rest of the 107th must have heard that they were coming because they quickly surrounded the returning men, cheering and clapping, slapping Bucky and the rest of the soldiers on the backs as they strode past.

With each touch, Bucky’s shoulders crept higher. He didn’t want them touching him; he didn’t want anyone touching him.

Contrary to eighty-percent of his life, he didn’t even want Steve touching him.

Every well-meaning pat of the back was like a hard slap to his oversensitive, bruised skin. A throbbing in his head began just behind his eye, just as the crowds finally – _fucking finally_ – parted.

Colonel Phillips marched forward, all bristling eyebrows and snuffling rage. A couple of agents from the SSR trailed behind him, eager to see what the commotion was. Steve immediately got all noble and stupid and offered himself up for a court martial, but luckily the shock of a lost division suddenly reappearing after being saved by one man appeared to have addled Phillips’ brain and he merely snorted before essentially dismissing Steve and the rest of them.

Then _she_ stepped forward.

All fancy accent and crimson lips smiling almost secretively at Steve. “You’re late.” It was far from a rebuke. She was flirting with Steve.

And Steve, Bucky’s best friend Steve, little Stevie who had tripped over and ripped his pants in front of the last dame he had gotten all flustered over had smiled back almost calmly, held up a damaged communicator ( _and fuck! Had that bullet been meant for his chest?_ ), and flirted back.

They stood like idiots, just beaming at each other, like they knew something no-one else did, and Bucky’s heart had plummeted to his feet, leaving him gasping like he was drowning.

It was like something out of a picture – the exultant soldiers, the hero returned from battle to his girl, or whatever, the grateful commander – it was only missing a kiss between the two of them.

From the way they were staring at each other, it wasn’t too far off.

“Let’s hear it for Captain America!”

He didn’t really understand what had happened until the men around him had started cheering… looked like the torture hadn’t helped him with his big mouth. Steve turned away from the delectable Agent Carter and gave him a look, like he knew what Bucky was doing. Which would be one of them, given that Bucky didn’t have a clue what the hell he was doing, short of trying not cry.

So he shrugged and offered Steve a rueful grin, because that’s what he did, he protected Steve.

And Steve… Steve finally had the recognition he needed…he deserved.

If the pretty Agent was part of that recognition, well, Bucky could learn to live with it.

\----------------------------------

Except that he couldn’t live with it.

Agent Carter was everywhere. Literally everywhere. Flaunting herself and her competence all over the place.

He went to speak to the doctors about his experience in Hydra’s labs – not that he told them much, he didn’t want to even think about it anymore – and Agent Carter was just picking up the latest set of lab reports for Steve’s tests. He reported what he had found out about Hydra’s operations and the enemies’ movements to the higher-ups and Agent Carter was sat there quietly making notes and whispering comments to Phillips. He boarded the train that was going to take them to a safe port where they could sail to London for respite and there Agent Carter was, sat in a corner chatting happily to Steve about… something.

Bucky couldn’t escape from her.

And despite himself, despite all the times he had sat by Steve’s bedside and prayed that he would live, prayed that he would find himself a good woman to take care of him and love him like Bucky…

Despite all that, Bucky was completely and insanely jealous of Carter.

For the first time in forever, he was now forced to share Steve’s attention, and it had never occurred to him before just how jealously he had guarded Steve’s affection in the past. Because Bucky had always been the outgoing one, Bucky had always been the one with friends all over town, who was surrounded with people on nights out dancing.

In the past, Steve had only had Bucky.

And although Bucky had longed for people to wise up and get their heads out of their asses and realise just how amazing Steve was, he also secretly liked being the sole recipient of Steve’s attention. He had liked being the only person – outside of Sarah Rogers and his own family – who has been clever enough, observant enough, to recognise how incredible his best friend was.

No, not liked it – loved it.

Steve was Bucky’s secret, one he had hoarded away, and now it felt like everyone suddenly knew just how incredible he could be.

Women flocked to Steve now; men fawned over him. Agent Carter smiled his presence, and Steve beamed bright and shining under all the attention, under the acknowledgment and respect he was now getting, that should have always been his.

And Bucky…

Bucky was wilting on the inside.

He was sure that something had happened, something other than war... or maybe it _was_ the war that had done it, but he suddenly felt _everything!_

Every flicker of happiness, every stab of pain, every hint of sadness just seemed to overwhelm him. He permanently felt on the edge. He wasn’t sleeping. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the faces of the men in his unit who had died, either in that first assault in the forest, during the second assault when Hydra had come at them with their strange blue weapons, or in that damned factory, where Bucky had somehow ended up as the superior officer and every injury, every flogging and every soldier who got dragged away to those damned laboratories was on him

And to add insult to injury, drinking the swill that counting for booze out here had messed with his constitution and it was now taking a lot more whiskies to get him drunk enough to forget how miserable everything was out here.

His nerves were shot to pieces and it was getting harder and harder to cover up how shaky his hands were unless they were wrapped around a glass of booze or a gun.

He knew Steve had noticed that something was different, although his friend, despite the horrors he had come across in that factory, was still so innocent about the state of war. Worse was the fact that Bucky was sure Agent Carter had noticed his unsteadiness, but then, she had been on the front for a lot longer than Steve had.

Still, as long as Steve didn’t notice…

He was so much more than Bucky was now, that Bucky didn’t think he could bear it if Steve suddenly realised how much the tables had turned.

So when he raised the stupid idea about him forming his own secret strike team to go after Hydra with the soldiers he had inadvertently recruited to help in the assault on Azzano, and then excitedly asked Bucky what he thought, he couldn’t help but smile and tell Steve that if they were dumb enough to go for the plan, then it was probably going to work.

Steve had grinned happily at him and then uttered a damning statement, “…Colonel Phillips wasn’t too sure about the team I wanted, but Pegg… Agent Carter supported me in my choices.”

Bucky wasn’t enough of an idiot to miss the slip. “I bet she did.”

He didn’t think there was any hint of how he felt about the sainted Agent Carter in his voice – mostly because he didn’t know how he felt about her – but something in his tone must have tweaked Steve’s notice.

“You… you like her right? Agent Carter?”

Bucky took a drag of the cigarette he had lit when Steve had come running back to the quarters they shared, full of smiles and plans. He held his breath for a moment, letting the smoke build inside his lungs, steadying him, before blowing it back out again and smiling at his friend…because that was what Steve was. _His friend._ He needed to remember that.

“Sure. She seems like a swell dame.” He eyed Steve carefully. It wasn’t hard to see the way the blonde man lit up under Bucky’s approval. “Terrifyingly competent.”

“I know, right?” Steve sounded positively smitten, his expression a mixture of fascination and attraction.

He still had that dumb look on his face at the bar later that night, when he had asked Bucky to join his team to go about storming Hydra bases and he had stupidly agreed with a quip and an arched innuendo that Steve had completely missed - like he always did – so that Bucky could pretend that he was fine with everything that was happening. So that he could pretend that he was ready to stand by Steve’s side once more, to help him finish the fights he started… to pretend that his hands weren’t already starting to shake, sweat beginning to pool at the base of his spine, at just the thought of going back to the front.

That look only deepened when Agent Carter arrived – a vision in red.

A spark of jealousy flared again, but Bucky couldn’t honestly have told you who it was directed towards.

She had acknowledged Bucky’s muttered, “Ma’am,” but then ignored him. He talked, she answered, but it was Steve she was replying to. Steve who was the only one she had eyes for.

And God knows Bucky couldn’t blame her.

There, in that moment, he was overcome by just how much Steve had changed. Jesus, he shone in the dingy light – dressed smartly, hair combed neatly, shoulders pulled back in newfound confidence.

Bucky was a wreck next to him.

He still hadn’t been outfitted for his new uniform yet, so he was wearing kit that he’d pillaged from other soldiers in his unit, grateful that the ill-fitting clothes hid from everyone just how much weight he’d lost, how fragile he felt. He had barely remembered to wash and shave this morning.

He had always been so smart back home, always been preening and proud of his appearance, whereas now he was determined that no-one would ever look at him and see something worth noticing in him again. Something…

_Remarkable._

That was the word the little German had muttered again and again, hovering over him, noting his every wince as he injected concoction after concoction which seared him from the inside out and…

No. Bucky did not want to be remarkable again.

Although, standing unnoticed between two beacons of light in that bar almost made him regret that.

He wanted to not be afraid. He wanted a pretty girl to notice him and make him feel normal again. He wanted… he wanted things he couldn’t have.

Not unless he wanted to be blue ticketed home.

So he laughed off the fact that Agent Carter had ignored him, clapped Steve on the back and then drank as many of his troubles away as he could.

Carter would be good for Steve. She noticed him, even when he was smaller, and they seemed to be a good match personality-wise. It was the best Bucky could have ever hoped for Steve.

But that night, he returned to their quarters early. He stripped his layers off and stared at the bare skin he uncovered in the mirror – fingers trailing hypnotically from puncture wounds to burns to bruises to lashes.

And if he thought about the wreck he had become, fading away into nothing next to the brilliance of Steve, he didn’t think anyone could blame him for shedding a hot, bitter tear or two.


	4. I'll fight

**2011**

Speaking to Peggy went about as well as could be expected.

She had listened to his explanation of Steve’s discovery, cried happy tears and then hugged him for ten minutes. Not that Bucky would ever admit it to anyone, but the contact was nice. He so rarely spoke to people these days and everyone he trusted to get close enough for physical contact weren’t exactly the touchy-feely types.

Of course, it didn’t help that mid-way through recounting his conversation with Fury, Peggy lapsed into familiar absent silence, only to blink and then greet him as if he’d only just entered the room. He’d sat with her for another half an hour just chatting about her family and the work her husband – dead fourteen years ago – was going to do on the garden next weekend.

When she was finally back to him, she had smiled quietly and grasped his hand before asking him to continue.

When Bucky had explained that Steve would probably look her up as soon as he was awake and able, seeing as the other Howling Commandos were all deceased, she had frowned at him. That same foreboding expression that he had always hated seeing on her, especially directed at him.

“And you, James? Will Steve be looking up what’s become of you too?”

Bucky had sat back in his chair, withdrawing his hand from her grasp. Despite the fact that he tried to brush it off, to smile, he could feel his expression hardening.

“There’s nothing to look up, is there, Peg? I don’t exist.”

She had scoffed at him. “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course, you exist.”

He had shaken his head at her. “No, I really don’t. As far as everyone is concerned James Barnes went missing one cold November night in the late 50s and was never seen again. As far as anyone’s concerned, I probably went into the East River.”

“But Steve’s not everyone, is he?” she’d pushed.

“Drop it, Peggy,” he’d ordered.

She’d tried to protest. “But…”

“Drop it.”

Peggy had leaned back in her armchair, discontent, a frown on her still-striking face, and Bucky had once again been struck by how much he hated that she would once again get everything she wanted… Steve back… while Bucky lurked in the shadows.

She’d cocked her head thoughtfully at him. “You know,” she began speculatively, “sometimes I regret never having brought you back in… properly, I mean.”

He couldn’t allow her to start thinking that way. “I don’t regret anything.”

She had laughed then, softly, mocking. “You’ve never lied to me before, James. I really don’t think you should start trying now.”

Bucky had stared down at the woman who probably knew him best out of everyone left alive in the world. It would’ve been so easy to storm out, but Bucky knew about rash displays of emotion – had paid the price for them before – so he placed a kiss on the back of Peggy’s hand, now creased and dimpled where it had once been smooth, and dredged up the smile that had always gotten him out of trouble in the past.

“I’m happy for you, Peg. That’s not a lie.”

“But not happy for yourself?”

She was far too perceptive for her own good, even in old age.

“I’ll see you around, Peggy.”

Bucky had left before he could make any more of a fool of himself.

\---------------------------------

The trouble was that while Bucky was quite willing to stay hidden from Steve and SHIELD for now, he wasn’t all that willing to let Steve stay hidden from him. No matter what he had told Peggy.

It was all too easy to slip back into bad habits.

So what if he discreetly stalked the Manhattan SHIELD base while he knew Steve was sequestered there, placing a few bugs around every now and then and listening out for any hints about what was happening in Steve’s treatment. So what if he tailed the main doctor in charge of Steve’s health back to his own home and then listened in on his conversations that evening with his wife. So what if he remotely hacked into SHIELD’s medical records using a junior agent’s log in details while sitting three tables behind him in a coffee shop dressed like a hipster while trying not to roll his eyes at the audacity of someone logging onto a secure government program in public with a dumbass stupid password like ‘QWERTY’.

The man was practically begging to be hacked by someone sinister from an outside agency…or Bucky.

And if he left a few hints in the software about Agent Whitley’s lax proclivities, well, he brought it on himself.

Interestingly enough though, he didn’t appear to the be the only one stalking the newly-defrosted Captain. Once or twice he’d caught a familiar glimpse of red hair lurking on the opposite building to him outside the SHIELD facility. The second time, he’d even caught a glimpse of a second figure helping little Natalia with whatever kind of stake out she was running, slice of pizza in hand as he perused the surroundings.

Looked like Barton was back from the desert.

It made sense. The archer usually worked under Coulson and Bucky knew, thankfully not from first-hand experience, that the man was a big fan of Captain America and his Howling Commandos. Just the thought set Bucky’s teeth on edge.

It wasn’t until five days after he’d visited the facility that he was awoken early in the morning by an unexpected phone call.

“He’s awake. He didn’t fall for Fury’s ruse, just like you predicted, and fought his way out of the building. They broke the news to him after he managed to get all the way to Times Square before they surrounded him.”

Bucky rubbed sleep out of his eyes and tried to make sense of the conversation that seemed to be happening, with or without his participation. “What?”

“Urgh.” The voice at the other end huffed. “Rogers is awake. He’s escaped and SHIELD found him. He’s now back in the facility while they find him some temporary accommodation.”

“Spiderling?”

Natasha sighed again. “How did you ever become one of the Soviet’s best agents when you can’t even tell who’s calling you in the middle of the night?”

Bucky collapsed back on the bed, hand over his face and laughed humourlessly. “Maybe old age is finally catching up to me. Or maybe I’m just not in the line of work anymore where I should expect calls in the middle of the night.”

“It’s 4 am and you think you’re not in this line of work anymore?” she scoffed.

Bucky gave in. “What do you want?”

“I told you. He woke up. Rogers woke up. And then went all crazy on half SHIELD’s ass. If you tap into the security footage, it’s kind of beautiful to watch,” she explained dreamily.

Buck sighed. “Yeah, I heard you the first time, Natashenka. Now why are you telling me?”

Something about his tone must have warned her that this was shaky ground. “Don’t you want to know what’s happening with him?”

Bucky launched himself out of bed and paced over to stare out the window. “What I want is to be left alone.”

Natasha paused. “But he’s your friend, right? Your best friend. Don’t you miss him?”

“I don’t think people can ever say they’re best friends after not having seen each other for 67 years, do you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if I’ve ever had a best friend like that before.”

Bucky hated the confusion threading through her tone. As much as he knew that she was putting half of it on, he also recognised that half of it was down to her violent upbringing.

…an upbringing he’d had a hand in – voluntarily or not.

“Spiderling… Natashenka… You know I’m your friend, yes?”

 _I’m your friend?_ God, he was terrible at feelings nowadays. Although sequestering yourself away from the world for a good thirty years was bound to do that to you.

There was an even longer pause. “… I know.” He was somewhat relieved to hear that Natasha’s voice sounded as wobbly as his did.

He needed to end this conversation. “So you’ve been stalking Captain America.”

Natasha latched onto the change of subject like it was a life raft in the ocean. “I’m not the only one.”

Bucky didn’t bother to answer. If he’d managed to spot her on in missions to gain intel, then he had no doubt that she had managed to see him too.

“I was tempted to help him escape Fury’s goons when he first started running, you know,” she added conversationally. “It seemed like it was unfair odds.”

Bucky leaned his forehead against the cold pane of glass. “He’s Captain America. I’m sure if he’d wanted to take down half of SHIELD he could do it without help from either of us.”

Natasha hummed noncommittally.

“I have to go.”

“Busy busy.”

“Something like that,” she agreed before hanging up on him.

Bucky heaved out a deep breath.

So, Natasha had noticed the stalking. If it had been anyone else he would be worried that he was losing his edge, but in her case she was too highly trained not to be aware of danger around her.

Still, it was handy that she’d decided to keep an eye on Steve for whatever reason.

………………………………..

It didn’t feel so handy when Bucky had received his fourteenth middle-of-the-night call on what Steve was up to next – which was in addition to his own stalking.

“He’s been offered a position in SHIELD by Fury, but has turned him down for now. He’s still going to receive support from them, but needs time to recover before getting deep into work.”

It made sense. Who would want to go straight to work after having been in a deep freeze for 70 years?

“His psych evaluation said that he was dealing with his situation well, but seemed a little reserved. He was cleared as being safe for release.”

Of course, he was cleared. You could hardly recruit someone if everyone thought they were mentally deranged.

“He’s agreed to go to some hidden cabin upstate to spend some time recuperating away from the city.”

That one had made Bucky shudder. His opinion of the countryside was forever marred by the year he had spent crouching in dug outs, shivering, in the middle of the French and Italian countryside during the war.

“He’s been allocated an apartment by SHIELD in Brooklyn. About five blocks from you.”

That was unwelcome news. Not that it didn’t make life easier in terms of accessing Steve. But it was a pain to have to start dodging all the extra agents now roaming Brooklyn who were also following the good Captain America. It was also somewhat annoying that Steve had somehow found and bribed the owner of the boxing gym that Bucky usually attended to let him have a key for after hours.

It wasn’t that Bucky resented Steve for wanting to hit things to blow off steam, but he was now getting in the way of Bucky’s routines.

He hadn’t realised that he had become such a stickler for keeping things the way things were for so long.

Then came the morning when Natasha didn’t bother calling at stupid o’clock in the morning, but instead chose to break into Bucky’s apartment instead. Bucky didn’t think she was that surprised to end up facing the barrel of the automatic.

“You know this is getting to be a habit of yours. A bad habit.”

Natasha took a step backwards. “If you wanted to shoot me, you already would have.”

Bucky tilted his head to one side, considering. “Would shooting you get you off my back?”

Natasha smiled. “It’s unlikely.”

Resigning himself to his fate, Bucky clicked the safety back on, lowering the weapon. “What do you want?”

Obviously reassured that he wasn’t going to shoot her anytime soon, Natasha moved into his bedroom, rummaging through his closet and throwing clothes onto the bed. “Get dressed. We’re going out,” she ordered.

Bucky eyed the clothes, contemplating this strange turn of events. “Give me one reason why I should listen to you.”

Natasha spun around, her hands on her hips. “Because I want to show you something and it’s not going to work unless you come with me.” She sighed. “Do I have to beat you into submission first?”

Bucky stared at her, searching her face for any clues of what she was thinking, before bowing to the inevitable.

“Fine. I’ll go with you,” he agreed. “But I’m not wearing that.” He gestured towards the jeans and hoodie she had picked out.

“We’re going undercover, Yasha, and your murder-gear’s not exactly inconspicuous.” She frowned at him, like he was deliberately being difficult. “Come on. Just wear the hoodie.”

He rolled his eyes, but acquiesced, throwing the hood up as they left the building.

As much as he wanted to question Natasha about what she was hoping to achieve here, he knew that she was more of a fan of show rather than tell, and he would just have to see with his own eyes whatever it was that she wanted him to see.

Hooking her arm through his, she led him along the semi-deserted streets and down to the subway, boarding the last carriage of the train and pushing him to sit down next to her. Bucky fought down the urge to shudder.

“You better have a damn good reason for bringing me underground,” he muttered to her.

“Sshh. I do,” she said. “Just be patient.”

They travelled along for one stop. Then two. Then three. Then…

The doors to the carriage opened and a lone figure boarded – tall, broad, clean-shaven and with his hair neatly parted and combed. His clothes were fairly old-fashioned – a checked shirt and slacks – but the brown leather jacket looked newer, and he carried a duffel bag with him.

_Steve!_

Bucky stared.

He couldn’t help it. He just couldn’t stop looking at him. There. Right before him on a train in New York.

Alive. Awake.

Just the sight of him was… incredulous, magical, wonderful.

Bitterly painful.

Bucky drew in a shaky breath and although the both of them despise weakness of any kind, he buried his face into Natasha’s neck, fighting for control and huffing short, hot breaths against the skin of her neck. So much for his famous composure. It turned out that having Steve walking, talking and moving around in front of him was a lot more disconcerting than seeing him lying unconscious in a room.

“Oh, Spiderling,” he murmured, “You better have a damned good reason for this.”

Hesitantly, Natasha raised a hand and patted him awkwardly on the head. “I do.”

Bucky took one last deep breath to compose himself and then sat up, discreetly eyeing Steve from where he was sat opposite them.

“Look at him,” Natasha commanded. “What do you see?”

Bucky glanced at her, before returning his attention to Steve. “A 6”2 man sitting on a train with a bag,” he described glibly.

Natasha gave him a disgusted look from under her hood. “Don’t be an idiot. Look again.”

Bucky looked, his eyes greedily soaking up the sight of the man he thought he’d lost all those years ago. But deep down, past all the… _feelings_ …he was having, was the same old combination of resentment and affection that he had always felt towards Steve after that last meeting between them in 1943.

Not that he was about to share that with Natasha. “Do you want me to case him like he’s a target? “Medium threat – height and muscle mass is on his side, but he’s unarmed and we would have the element of surprise, so easily caught off guard.”

She elbowed him in his ribcage hard and he grunted softly.

“I want you to look at him. _Really_ look at him,” she said firmly.

Bucky sighed, but followed her orders, studying what part of Steve’s expression and body language he could actually see, given that the other man practically had his back turned to him.

Steve looked…

Strong. Powerful. Self-righteous. Alive.

_Lost._

This was a man who looked utterly and completely lost. From the hunched posture to the fidgeting hands and the blank staring out of the window.

Steve looked exactly like what he was: a man out of time.

Someone who was all alone in the world. It made Bucky’s heart – what little of it there was left after all these years – hurt.

“You see it, don’t you,” Natasha was hissing in his ear. “He’s lonely. And vulnerable. It’s only a matter of time before Fury gets his hooks into him.”

“Stop,” Bucky murmured at her, unable to take his eyes of Steve now that he could see him.

“He’s asked for files to review on all the Howling Commandos. Carter’s too. And yours…”

“Stop!” he said more firmly.

Natasha ignored him. “Why would he ask for your folder unless he cared about you and given that you’re the only one other than Carter who’s still…”

The train slowed and Bucky bolted out of his seat, avoiding the hand that grasped at him to stay put. Evading Natasha, he was off the train, up the stairs and walking away from the station on the now-busy streets as fast as he could, ignoring the cool morning air that stung at his face.

It didn’t take her long to catch up to him, grabbing his arm and swinging him around to face her. Friendship or not, she was lucky that he didn’t knock her out for this. Instead, Bucky shook off her hand and carried on walking.

“James!” she called after him. “James! Yasha!”

He kept his head down and his feet moving, grateful in that moment for the hair which covered his face. He wasn’t sure he wanted anyone to see his expression.

“Bucky!”

He stopped and turned sharply, fury rushing through him as he strode back towards Natasha, ignoring her triumphant look and grabbing her shoulders to slam her back against a nearby wall. Her face immediately fell at his rough handling and she shoved at him, gently at first and then more strongly.

He let himself grip tighter for a second, just to prove a point, and then released her.

“You don’t get to use that name, Romanoff, so you better forget it!”

He ignored the brief look of hurt that crossed her face before she hid it.

“And why’s that?” Jesus, she just loved to push his buttons. “Because Steve used it?”

“Drop it.” This time he didn’t try to hide the threat in his voice.

“Why won’t you just visit him? You’ve got me tailing him all over the city and yet you won’t even show yourself.”

Bucky pushed himself away from her, feeling his temper beginning to boil. He pushed it down. He always pushed it down. “I never asked you to do anything, so don’t go blaming all this on me.”

She shoved him back. “You didn’t tell me to stop following him either!”

Bucky laughed bitterly. “Well, now I’m telling you. Stop. Go and do your actual job instead.”

He spun away from her, but barely made it five steps before she was talking again.

“This is part of my job, Barnes.” Ouch, that hurt. “And what I’ve come to realise is that Steve Rogers is all alone and you won’t even give him the time of day. I mean, when I came in you spent half your waking life with me and you won’t even give this guy a chance…”

“He never gave me one!”

He hadn’t meant to shout that.

Now there was nothing left to do but brazen the whole thing out.

“He made his choice a long time ago, Natalia.” He resisted the urge to glance back as he walked away. “Now respect that I’ve made mine.”


	5. Until the end

**1943**

Bucky was drinking way more than he should. Way more.

It had started with a celebratory drink after escaping that hellhole factory and had continued with a stiff drink to settle his nerves on the flight over.

Then a drink to celebrate arriving safely in London, despite the nightly blackouts and German bombers.

Then a drink with Steve to hash out his friend’s new plan to form a team to take out Hydra bases across Europe.

Then a couple to wash down the taste in his mouth after he agreed – with a grin for good measure – to follow Steve around on this fool’s mission.

Then a few…dozen…more to wipe his memory of the interaction between Steve and Agent Carter.

Then a flask passed between him and Howard Stark – _Howard Stark! Could you believe?!_ – while they outfitted him in a manner befitting Captain America’s loyal sidekick.

His uniform was updated and a lot better fitting than the standard uniform he had been kitted out with when he had first received his commission. And the boots… the boots were heaven. It felt like it had been years since he had worn a pair of shoes or boots on his feet that actually fitted and didn’t leave painful welts and blisters all over his skin. Although he supposed that the rain and the mud that had seemed to permeate everything in sight hadn’t really helped.

He’d also selected a blue jacket to wear instead of the standard camoflage – not the most practical colour, but he’d received a field version and a peacoat for the stupid movies the brass were already planning starring their beloved captain. A moment of vanity had him pick out the brighter colour, some small part of him remembering all the times he had been complimented on his blue suit and the look in Stevie’s eyes when he had first bought it, his friend muttering that it “brought out the colour of his eyes.” It was also the warmest piece of clothing he could find and get away with wearing.

Christ, he was so cold all the time.

The kind of cold that seeped inside your bones and down your spine and then lingered, sending shivers wracking through his body at random moments. Sure he was relatively safe for now, but the cold deep inside him stuck around.

Sometimes, in his more dramatic moments, he felt like he would never be warm again and in those moments it was hard to stop himself from sitting mesmerised as he ran his fingers repetitively over the healing punctures that littered his arms.

He also spent a lot of time with Stark finessing which weapons he was planning on taking with him to the front, especially once the other man discovered that he had gone through sniper training back home.

The two of them wasted hours drinking while they refined weapon after weapon, personalising rifles and revolvers to his specifications and testing them out on the range. There was something very comforting about being armed, about holding a well-made customised Johnson rifle and just slowly and steadily obliterating the targets.

“Damn, son!” Howard commented when they reeled the target in, peering through the hole in the head that Bucky had created. “That aim of yours is something else. Almost perfect.” He eyed Bucky suspiciously. “You sure they didn’t do anything to improve that when you were stuck in that factory?” He prodded Bucky in the shoulder. “You know…torture to the eyeballs…that kind of thing?”

“Sorry.” Bucky shrugged the touch off with a fake grin. “There was too much normal torture going on for special treatment like that.”

Howard barked out a laugh and slapped him on the back, ignoring the wince Bucky was barely able to hide. “Surprised that you’re signing yourself up for more of the same then.”

Bucky had smiled in agreement uneasily and the two of them had moved onto other business.

Howard was right though in a way. The five minutes of training he had received with a rifle barrel that veered nastily to the left wasn’t nearly enough time to make him this good of a shot. It was like somehow his brain could now just see the shot he should take, his mind calculating windspeed and angles at a lightning rate that quite frankly scared him.

It shouldn’t be like this. It had never been like it before and for all he joked about what had happened in that factory to Stark, what was happening to him now terrified him.

So he drank and he smoked and he joked and he went home every evening and shook silently for however long it took for Steve to return to him.

Another thing he was able to hide well though over the tortuous month in London was the effect that all the drinking was having on him…

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

He could drink as much as he liked – and oh, how he tried – but it had no effect. He might as well have been drinking water for all the good it did. Every now and then he caught Steve watching him as he nursed another whisky, but he never said anything.

Maybe something about the look on Bucky’s face stopped him.

Still, he couldn’t help but stick his nose in every now and then. “Are you all right, Buck? Don’t you think you should lay off the scotch a bit?”

Bucky had eyed him suspiciously and then downed the glass he was holding. “Nope. In fact, I think I should have another.”

He reached for the bottle that the bartender had left him after he glowered at him, but Steve had grabbed his wrist before he could reach it.

Bucky’s reaction was immediate. “Don’t touch me!” he hissed, yanking his arm away and closer to his body.

It felt like the touch had burned him. Any unexpected touch seemed to burn him.

Steve released him quickly, holding his hands up away from him, concern written all over his face.

_Shit!_

Bucky felt a bolt of terror rush through him, terror that Steve had seen just what he had become. He laughed uneasily, trying to brush his overreaction off as if it was nothing.

It was nothing. Absolutely nothing.

“Jesus, punk. Warn a guy before you go around grabbing them.” He tried for the levity he knew that Steve would respond to best, and for a moment it seemed to work.

Steve offered him a smile and he grinned wanly back.

“Sorry, Buck. I wasn’t thinking.” Steve moved to pat him on the back and Bucky couldn’t stop the way his body tensed at the gesture.

Steve paused.

Bucky scrambled to make things right.

“Sorry, pal. Guess I’m not really feeling like myself tonight. Think the bombing last night got my nerves up.”

He laughed, but instead of sounding comforting, it was high, pale imitation of humour.

Steve was now watching him with concern, exactly what Bucky didn’t want. Still, he humoured him. “Guess the noise reminds you of the front.”

“Yeah,” Bucky latched onto the excuse with both hands. “Yeah, something like that.”

Steve was still looking concerned so Bucky looked for something to distract him.

“Sit down with me, pal. Have a drink.” He leaned in when Steve looked like he was about to make an excuse. “Come on, Stevie. Feels like I haven’t spoken to you in ages.”

Steve hesitated for a moment and then smiled and shrugged. “Sure, why not? Although,” he lifted the bottle and poured a measure into a glass he purloined off the side of the bar, “I don’t think this stuff has any effect on me anymore.”

He saluted Bucky with his glass and Bucky smiled at him, relieved. For one brief shining evening it seemed like things were back to normal – just Bucky and Steve sitting in a bar, drinking, talking shit, the usual.

But then their evening was interrupted by a message that Steve was wanted by Phillips back at the base. His friend had offered him an uneasy grin and hesitated, but Bucky had waved him off then taken what remained of the scotch back to the room where he could try to drown his sorrows away.

That evening had marked a turning point in Steve’s behaviour though.

He watched Bucky a lot more closely after that. Watched how much he drank, watched how Bucky got lost in his memories sometimes and laughed at jokes a half-second after everyone else, watched how loud noises would make Bucky freeze for a moment too long before he could re-set his brain and remember that he was safe.

He watched how Bucky trained – ruthlessly eliminating any of his opponents in hand to hand and decimating any targets that Stark put in front of him. He also trained with Bucky. A year of touring around with the USO hadn’t even given Steve any idea of how to punch properly, so Bucky took it upon himself personally to make sure the stupid idiot didn’t get himself killed on his first mission out.

Of course, that meant Steve had more time to study him. Bucky was exhausted at the end of every day, just trying to rein in his nerves.

Still, it also gave Bucky time to surreptitiously study this new version of Steve that had shown up.

This new Steve held himself with a new confidence that the old Steve never had. He held his shoulders back – not that he could before with the scoliosis – and met more people’s eyes. Sure he was still hopeless with dames, but he didn’t glare at them when they deigned to talk to him now.

His eyes hadn’t changed though.

They were still the same warm blue they had always been, still blindingly obstinate and determined to do the right thing at any cost.

They were still innocent – bright and hopeful, dreaming of a resolute victory against the Nazis, against Hydra, against Schmidt and…

Bucky didn’t want to see that light dim, but war was a terrible thing and he didn’t know how long he could protect Steve from the darkness for.

So the only thing to do, the only thing he could do, was to make sure that Steve came out of this whole thing alive and sane.

For a while he could almost pretend things were going to be all right.

But they weren’t.

He knew it. Everyone around him seemed to know it. It was only Steve who seemed to be wilfully oblivious.

But Steve was now so…

It was like whatever they’d done to Steve had just amplified all the things about Steve that Bucky had admired before. And feelings that Bucky had kept hidden, even from himself threatened to break free.

It was as if whatever had happened in that factory had stripped him raw and left him open and bleeding for everyone to see.

More than once he had caught Carter, Stark, Phillips or even the rest of the boys looking at him oddly, normally when he had just viciously attacked a training bag or when he caught himself staring at new Steve for just a little too long.

He supposed he was lucky that Steve’s transformation was so drastic so that he could blame his watching Steve on that, rather than it being confused for something that would’ve got the shit kicked out of him back in Brooklyn.

Still, Bucky didn’t say anything and as long as he was an effective member of Stevie’s hit squad, his behaviour, odd or otherwise, didn’t raise too many eyebrows.

So he trained and he drank and he practiced shooting the bad guys so that when they got onto the field they couldn’t shoot the giant target that Steve had decided to carry around with him.

And if Steve told him to take it easy once in a while, then Bucky would just smile, pat him on the shoulder and tell him that he would rest when the war was over.

There was only one other time when Steve had spoken to Bucky about their plans for the war.

“You know you can still pull out of this if you want to. Everyone else who were held as prisoners in Austria were offered honourable discharges, especially those Zola experimented on, so you could always go home instead of this,” he offered awkwardly. “I heard some general wanted to give you a medal and everything for your leadership.”

Bucky had snorted and taken a drag from a cigarette than Dernier had won in a card game two nights before. “I don’t know why. I didn’t do much apart from surrender, and look where that got us.”

“Buck,” Steve was giving him that stupid, earnest look again, “You protected your men the only way you knew how, and from what Jones said, you protected him and others from disappearing into those laboratories at the factory. You did all you could.”

Bucky wished he would just stop. “Yeah, well…”

“Bucky. Bucky!”

He finally looked back at Steve, hating the worry he could now see so clearly in his friend’s face.

“You don’t have to do this! You don’t have anything to prove!” Steve sat back, hands twisting. “You could go home!”

Bucky snorted, dredging up whatever strength he had left to banish the shadows from his face. “And do what? Potter around while you’re out here getting into God knows what sort of trouble without someone to pull you out of it?”

Steve hesitated. “I just meant… you seem on edge. Peggy said-”

Bucky saw a brief flash of red at the mention of her name, but forced it down. Whatever she had said, whatever she had whispered into Steve’s ear about him, he needed to shut it down.

He reached out to grab Steve’s shoulder, thumb kneading at the base of his neck. Steve visibly relaxed at the gesture and Bucky forced himself to meet his eyes. “You don’t need to worry about me, Stevie. I mean, sure it’s been tough out here, but I said I was with you until the end of the line and I meant it. Whether that’s in Red Hook or Rennes makes no difference. I’m with you, Stevie.”

Steve had smiled, relieved, and then pulled him into a hug and Bucky had buried his face in his shoulder and prayed to a God that he was no longer sure he believed in that he could do this, that he could drag him and Steve through this horrific war until they could both just go home and never leave again.

No more had been said about it after that.

Then came their first mission, raiding a Hydra base near the French border.

It had all gone according to plan by all accounts, even though Bucky couldn’t remember a lot of it. But he knew he had done his duty, he had protected Steve and really that was all he needed to know, all he needed to remember to do.

They had secure the perimeter and if Bucky had been a little too quick to dispatch the enemy with perfect headshots, then who was going to complain. To be honest, it was the most calm that he had felt since leaving that awful place in Kreischberg – rifle in hand, destroying the enemy. His hands finally steady after weeks of planning and uncertainty.

This was certain. This he knew how to do.

It wasn’t until they made it into the building that things fell apart.

Bodies. Everywhere.

Some of them barely human-looking anymore. Twisted and warped and bent and wrong.

And next to them the tools of torture he recognised. Vials and knives and needles.

Gabe, who was looking for survivors with Bucky and Steve, began to wretch and ran for fresh air. Even Steve covered his mouth in disgust and although Bucky knew that he had seen this before – seen the damage that Hydra could do before – he still wanted to shield him from it all.

“I’m going to collect dog tags if you want to carry on looking for survivors,” he offered.

Steve threw him a grateful smile and left while Bucky carried out the thankless task.

He made it through three laboratories before the fear and rage welled up inside him and the dam broke.

Steve came running at the first crash as shelves of liquids and medical equipment went flying, Bucky letting out a strangled yell as he sent them flying. He raged and cursed as he destroyed everything that had been used to end these poor bastards’ lives.

Bottles smashed, needles were bent, metal pallets were thrown through windows and it was only Steve wrapping his arms around him from behind and dragging him out that stopped him from smashing the entire factory beneath his feet.

As soon as they were past the treeline, Bucky yanked himself free, panting like a wounded animal.

 _Shit!_ He hated this. Hated the look that Steve was giving him – wary and concerned.

He had been hiding it so well and now, in one act of fury, he had given it all away.

Bucky was quiet on the march back to their base later that day, as was Steve.

He didn’t know what his friend had told the rest of their team, but aside from giving the two of them some strange looks at the obvious distance that was suddenly between them, they didn’t say anything.

Which meant they didn’t know. Which meant Steve had somehow hidden Bucky’s tantrum from the rest of them.

He supposed he should be grateful.

When they returned to camp, they were debriefed and when reporting on what they had found in the laboratories, both Bucky and Steve left out the destruction Bucky had caused.

Bucky and the rest of the team then left while Steve hung back to plan tactics with the bigwigs at this particular base.

Bucky made it across the camp, joking and mock-fighting with the rest of the guys, before he reached the safety of his own tent and let the adrenaline take him. Collapsing onto his knees, he felt the trembling begin, starting in his hands, so fumbling for a cigarette or a drink to calm his nerves wasn’t an option, and moving up his arms until it felt like his whole body was vibrating and he couldn’t get enough air into his lungs.

He gasped, trying to tilt his head back, like he’d advised Stevie to do so many times in the past, and a small part of his brain wondered whether this was what his asthma attacks had felt like all these years – like all the air was escaping your body, but none would come in. All it felt like he could do was shake and pant as visions of dead, battered men floated across his eyes, even when he squeezed them shut as tight he could.

There was nothing. Nothing but a body he couldn’t control and an overwhelming sense of panic that sent his heartbeat cascading through his ears.

But there was something…a voice…

_Stevie._

He was there, kneeling with Bucky, reassuring him, holding him together.

Bucky didn’t know how long they stayed there on the floor, him falling apart and Steve wrapped around him, muttering calming platitudes he couldn’t really here or believe about how everything was going to be just fine.

And Bucky clung to him as if he was the only thing that could save him, the only thing that was certain in his life – that Steve would be there and Bucky would be with him…

Slowly…gradually…he calmed down, body and mind too exhausted to do anything but shudder every time his breath hitched in his throat. Barely aware of what was going on around him, Bucky held onto Steve as if he could chase the terror away just with the sheer determination of his presence. Steve ran his fingers gently over Bucky’s face and it wasn’t until that moment that Bucky realised that he had been sobbing as he held on tightly to his friend.

As the fear and panic ebbed away and the cold of the hard-packed forest floor began to seep into Bucky’s awareness, it was replaced by a feeling of abject humiliation.

He had tried hard – _so hard_ – to hold everything in, to be just fine, to not let on that he was in any way less than sound, and in one fell swoop, he had undone all his hard work.

_In front of Steve, no less._

He could feel him pulling away from the tight grip he had held him and Bucky kept his watery eyes firmly on the floor in front of him…or on Steve’s knees in this case.

“Bucky…” Steve sounded terrible – anguished – and Bucky’s cursed himself for the worry he knew he was causing, the worry he knew he _had_ caused.

He didn’t reply. Couldn’t reply.

Steve tried again. “Bucky…”

This time he placed his fingers under Bucky’s chin, forcing him to raise his face, to look at him.

“Bucky.”

He looked exactly like Bucky had feared he always would – worried, hurt, upset, fearful…

Bucky wondered in that moment if the fear was for him or of him, although he suspected that Steve would admit to neither.

It was a look that struck Bucky deep down inside, a look he had seen only once before on the day they had buried Sarah Rogers in the ground, and he hated – _truly hated_ – that he was the one to put that look on Steve’s face again.

“I’m sorry,” he blurted out. “I didn’t mean… I’m sorry.”

He lowered his eyes back to Steve’s knees again, noticed that some of the stitching on the seams was coming loose. It felt like it was all he could say, over and over again:

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

He wanted to wail, wanted to make promises that it would never happen again, but he couldn’t force the words past his lips.

“I’m sorry.”

“Bucky…” Steve interrupted him, hands back on his shoulders. “Bucky.”

He shook him lightly, breaking him out of his cowering apologies and something about his tone made Bucky look up again, wearily, questioning.

His expression was pained, but resolute.

It was an expression that Bucky had seen many times before, right before he was dragged into a fight that they could never win, but that Steve couldn’t stay away from, ‘because it’s about what’s right, Buck.’

“Steve?” he croaked out.

“Bucky…you’re going home.”

He stared blankly at him, the words not making sense.

Steve elaborated. “I shouldn’t have asked you to do this, Buck, especially not after Kreischberg, but I thought… I don’t know what I thought. I guess I thought it would be like back home, you and me, but it’s not and it wasn’t fair of me to ask you, not really.”

Nothing was making sense. He was talking but it could’ve been nonsense for all it was worth.

“Ask me what?” He felt like he was in a daze.

Steve had found his backbone now and was kneeling up straighter. “Asked you to come with me on this mission. It wasn’t fair. I just didn’t… think…”

He paused and the meaning of his words slowly began to sink in. As they did, Bucky felt the familiar panic begin to rise again, his head throbbing with it all.

“I… I don’t understand,” he managed to get out. “Steve… I don’t… I don’t understand. What are you saying?”

Steve seemed to gather himself and met Bucky’s eyes steadily, resolve making his voice stronger, more sure.

“I’m saying that I’ve already spoken to Phillips, Bucky. It’s all settled. You’ve done your part in this war. Now you get to go home and get away from all this.”

Bucky stared blankly at him as the full weight of what he was saying began to sink in.

It was everything Bucky had hoped for and feared since Steve had got it into his head that he wanted to go traipsing around Europe on a mission to stop a madman, and all he could think was that he was being left behind.

“You get to go home to Brooklyn, Buck.” Steve tried to smile at him, but it was hollow thing.

Bucky carried on staring at him, this stranger his best friend had become, full of war and glory and righteousness, and suddenly felt very very small and insignificant.

Steve was leaving him, sending him away, and it hurt. More than torture, more than watching as he lost him to others – Carter and Stark and Phillips.

It hurt. Deep down. It hurt in the way that pain always did when it got too hard to bear and you just wanted to lash out to make it stop.

So he did the only thing he could.

He pulled away and stood up, watching with cold eyes as Steve scrambled to his feet in front of him, and he hoped that Steve felt every inch of the venom he summoned into his voice as he turned and left the tent, left the man who was leaving him all alone in the world.

“Fuck you, _Captain America_!”


	6. Creatures of my dreams

**2012**

A few weeks after their confrontation, Bucky received a single text message from Romanova: _Moscow._

He was annoyed with her for interfering, mad with her because even though he had told her not to, he was 80% sure that she was still following Steve, and cross that she didn’t seem to realise the maelstrom of emotions she had released by taking him on that rainy journey, making him look at Rogers, really look, and see the damage behind the mask.

It was easier to take the moral high ground when he didn’t have to see the damage of all of their actions left behind, whether intended or not.

Still, just because he was mad at her, didn’t mean that Natalia’s message didn’t raise some flags for him. As much as he understood SHIELD’s tactical reasons behind sending her to Russia given her history, he was also aware of the negatives that could arise from the situation.

 _Backup?_ he replied.

As cross as he was, he wasn’t going to not offer.

_Unnecessary._

Clearly he wasn’t the only one who could still be in a snit. Still, he had asked and she had refused so at least any obligations between the two of them weren’t getting in the way.

He was still following Steve, especially now that he knew Natasha wasn’t keeping an eye out for him as well, so much so that he was way past pretending it was anything less than an obsession now.

Especially now that he had sat a mere 10 foot from Steve and been able to parse the expressions on his face exactly.

Seeing that blank, lost look…

Bucky wanted to be angry, wanted to be furious.

He had spent most of his adult life with rage burning inside him over how Steve had treated him in France. How one minute he was with his best friend, ready to sacrifice everything, ready to die for him if necessary, only then to be discarded like a broken toy. That feeling hadn’t gone away over the years. Sure it was muted over time as age and – what probably amounted to – wisdom took over, as Bucky thought about what he would sacrifice for his loved ones, but it was still there, still burning deep within, like a smouldering powder keg, just waiting for the right moment to explode.

But now more than that, he just felt sad.

Sad for him, sad for Steve, sad for Peggy, sad for all of them really, and especially sad because who knew what they could’ve done, what they all could’ve achieved if only Steve hadn’t taken it upon himself to make Bucky’s choices for him.

For one, if Bucky hadn’t been sent home, then perhaps he wouldn’t be sneaking around Brooklyn on top of rooftops, getting gravel embed itself in his knees. For another, he wouldn’t have to skulk outside his gym to make sure Steve wasn’t there before he went at 3 o’clock in the morning.

When he was sure the coast was clear, he dropped down off the roof and let himself into the old building using the key he had been given and dragged some mats down onto the floor. As he did, he noticed that Will, the owner, had got in a new shipment of punching bags. No prizes for guessing who was getting through those in a hurry.

It was almost reassuring to see that some things stayed the same, no matter how much time had passed.

Stripping his coat, sweater and shoes and socks off, he switched off his brain and let the rhythm of his old training regime take his body, the movements flowing without thinking, almost as easy as breathing.

He was balancing on his right arm when a noise outside the gym caught his attention – the sound of a boot scraping on glass.

Quickly and silently, he slipped to the side of the room, into the shadows, waiting. His fingers quickly released a knife from his ankle holster and then the door to the room was creaking open. He could only hope that it wasn’t Steve, insomnia having driven him to take his aggression out on those punching bags, although he would’ve hoped that he would never be so heavy-footed.

Holding his breath, he waited, the Soldier rising, as the mystery figure walked out in front of him before he acted, springing from the shadows to grip the man by the throat and slam him against the brick wall, knife already breaking skin at the intruder’s neck.

“Oh, it’s you.”

Fury glared at him. “Yeah, it is. So I would appreciate it if you would remove the knife.”

Bucky matched his glare with his own, satisfied to note the increased wariness that crept into the other man’s eye. For his own satisfaction, he pressed the knife down harder, tracing the bead of blood as it trailed down Fury’s neck.

“I don’t appreciate being hunted down, Nick,” he spat out.

Fury’s lip curled up. “Well, maybe if you didn’t make it so damn hard to find you, I wouldn’t resort to having to stalk the one place I do know you show up just to speak to you.”

 _Shit!_ That meant having to change his routines again, especially if one was well established enough to enable fucking SHIELD to find him.

Cocking his head, Bucky paused and let his awareness spread out.

“You came alone,” he concluded.

Fury coughed, beginning to look slightly purple around the face. “That was the deal, right, that you made with Carter.”

Bucky hummed noncommittally.  “Maybe I just didn’t expect you to honour it.”

He released the metal fingers, letting Fury drop heavily to the floor, and although the Soldier was screaming in his head at the tactical disadvantage, he turned his back on the taller man to retrieve his clothing.

Fury coughed, but began to regain some of his composure as he watched Bucky put his socks back on and lace his boots. “Let’s just say I’m a man of my word.”

Bucky blinked at him and then stood up, shrugging his coat on. “Good for you.”

Fury looked for a moment like he was about to lose his patience. But then, Bucky supposed, he had never really seen him look any other way.

“Don’t you want to know why I’m here?”

Bucky shrugged and headed for the exit. “I’m assuming you’re here for Rogers but arrived too early. Just hold on for twenty or so minutes more and I’m sure he’ll be here.” He gestured towards the corner of the room where the shadows of the night still lingered. “There’s a good hiding spot over there if you feel the need to linger before you speak to him.”

 “We need your help.”

Now that got him to pause, if only because he didn’t think he’d ever heard Fury ask nicely for something. Barking orders, yes; using biting sarcasm to get his point across, yes; but a quiet plea for help?

“You’ve got my attention for the next 30 seconds.”

Fury didn’t waste. “Our base in the Mojave Desert is gone, attacked by an extra-terrestrial being known as Loki…”

“Project PEGASUS,” Bucky interrupted.

Fury frowned. “And how do you know that exactly?”

Bucky snorted and turned around fully to face him. “You know as well as I do that your systems need updating.” He flashed a quick, humourless smile at Fury. “But tell me, why should I be pulled into your squabbles with the Asgardians?”

Fury paused.

“I suppose there’s no point bothering to ask.”

Bucky shrugged. “There were reports in New Mexico of alien activity. Someone going around claiming to be an Asgardian called Thor. Since he didn’t end up in a sanatorium it kind of implies that he was telling the truth. And mythological creatures were around before the war too…that’s why they’re mythological.”

Fury pursed his lips. “Right.”

“So I’ll ask again, and make it quick, ‘cause you’ve only got about five seconds left, why should I be bothered?”

“This isn’t just your run-of-the-mill problem, Barnes. This is perhaps a world-threatening event.” Fury took a step towards him. “I’ve assembled a team of people that I think…”

Comprehension bloomed in Bucky’s mind. “Is this about your precious Avengers Initiative?”

Fury paused, mouth open, but then smirked. “I guess I should have expected you to know about that.”

“Yes, you should have.” Bucky didn’t even bother trying to hide the distain in his voice. “And once again, my answer is no.”

Fury didn’t even bother trying to argue. “As you like then.”

Bucky nodded. He waited for a moment as a thought struck him suddenly.

“Given that you seem to think the world is ending,” he began, “you’d think you wouldn’t really want to take no for an answer so easily…”

The older man grinned ruefully. “You really think I could make you do anything I wanted, Barnes? Without breaking all the bones in my body trying?”

Bucky ignored him and continued thinking aloud. “…which means you didn’t really think I’d agree to anything in the first place.” His eyes flicked around the bare room, taking in the objects scattered around, including an old clock. “And that means that this little speech about the fate of the world wasn’t meant for me. You just got lucky.”

He nodded his head towards the clock. “Nearly time for Captain America to show up. Are you going to give him the world-saving speech too?”

Fury inclined his head, but didn’t say anything.

“Think he’ll go for that spiel?” Bucky needled. “Have you worn him down enough already? Sending him to that stupid cabin in the woods so he could ‘think about his place in the world’, realise he doesn’t have one and then bend over backwards when you show up with a purpose for him?”

“Barnes.” It was quietly but firmly spoken.

Bucky paused, frozen closer to Fury that he had realised, his metal hand reflexively opening and closing into a fist. _Well shit!_ He guessed that Steve, and his wellbeing, did still have the same effect on him as it had in the past.

Glaring at Fury, he flexed his arm menacingly and was gratified to see him take a small step back. It wasn’t much of a concession, but it did ensure that the other man would take what he said next seriously.

“Don’t railroad him. Let him choose.”

Fury relaxed minutely.

At least, Bucky thought, if Steve was where Fury was, then he could still keep an eye on him.

“Any other conditions?” Fury seemed to get the seriousness of what Bucky was trying to convey. So it might as well be the right time to lay down the law.

“World-threatening doesn’t mean he’s one of your Strike team. Saying yes to this doesn’t mean saying yes to everything else.”

Fury stood up straighter. “You seem awfully sure that he’s going to say yes.”

“So are you or you wouldn’t be wasting your time here,” he shot back.

Fury conceded the point.

“You need to give him time too,” Bucky advised begrudgingly. “He’s going to want to know the facts before going in, so show him whatever damn file you’ve got in your car so he’s got all the information in front of him. You hold anything back, it’s going to blow up in your face.” He shrugged. “Probably literally.”

Unsure what else he could say, if anything, he turned back towards the door, then paused.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” he turned back to Fury and let the other man feel the full force of his conviction and his ruthlessness. “You’ve only just raised the man from the dead. It would be a shame if he ended up back in the ground again so soon, _for everyone involved_.”

He didn’t bother waiting for Fury’s response. The other man knew what he could do, _had seen_ what he could do, and as much as they pretended that half the reason SHIELD didn’t get involved his life was to protect him and keep him out of the public – and not so public – eye, it also meant that Fury actually had a secret agency left standing to be director of.

Bucky was almost reassured that despite the fact that Steve’s presence had clearly sent him insane, he could still at least strike fear in some people, even though recently it felt like it was less people every day.

Taking a quick, searching look around before he left the gym, he stepped quickly and assuredly out onto the main street and began to match the pace and posture of the few people out and about at this time of the morning.

Which meant it wasn’t very hard to spot the one man headed in his direction who didn’t look as worn down and tired as everyone else. Ducking his head, he shoved his face half into the collar of his coat and cursed the fact that he had tied his hair back for his workout otherwise he could’ve used that for cover.

Still, some small impulse made him quickly glide across the road so he was walking on the same side as Steve. Just to try… something.

Shuffling along he knocked Steve’s shoulder with his own, accepting the man’s quiet apology and mumbling his own in Russian.

He hadn’t got more than four steps away when he heard the other man pause in his stride and turn to look at him, and he deliberately exaggerated his shuffle in response, so far removed from Bucky Barnes physically as he could get in that movement.

He continued walking that way until he heard Steve turn back around and carry on his journey to the gym and Fury.

Wouldn’t that be fun little joyride that Fury was sending him on? Still, his brain whirred, it couldn’t hurt to be informed on these matters.

Natalia had been relatively quiet over the last few weeks, but he was sure that if Fury was finally activating his special project then she, and probably Barton too, would be involved.

He sent her a quick message - _Need eyes_ – and waited for her response while he returned home to set up his surveillance equipment, cigarette in hand.

As it was, he didn’t have to wait long.


	7. Raise up

**1943-1945**

Returning from the front was… a shock.

Bucky spent most of the boat journey home unable to sleep in the crowded, claustrophobic bunks below deck, so spent most of his time huddled in a corner out of the way on the deck, chain-smoking and watching the endless waves drift by. He borrowed a jacket from one of his bunk mates on the days when it got cold, unable to even touch the smart blue coats he had been gifted as part of Steve’s unit. The bright colours seemed flashy and obnoxious now, surrounded by the misery of the returning soldiers.

Sure, many of them were relieved to be finally heading home, but the optimistic glow was tempered by the fact that many were returning worse off… that many wouldn’t be returning if they weren’t worse off.

He supposed he should be grateful that he was one of the ones returning who was still able-bodied. Most of his fellow ship-mates were returning with missing limbs, damaged lungs from gas attacks, burned skin from bombings.

It wasn’t the numerous physical ailments that caused the most disquiet in Bucky though. It was the creeping illnesses that you could see and couldn’t predict that swept through the boat and made his skin crawl. Soldiers with fevers and blood poisoning and pneumonia – something he had witnessed Steve suffer through many a time – were there one minute and then discretely carted away the next. Shell-shocked soldiers spent their time wandering up and down the narrow corridors or hidden away mumbling to themselves. The louder ones were fine in the day, cheerful even at the thought of going home, only to spend the night screaming themselves hoarse.

Bucky sometimes wondered if that was what Steve saw when he looked at him. If he had felt that same rush of pity and aversion that Bucky felt towards them.

There were other soldiers who had been captured too, although none who had been experimented on like he had. Hard labour, sure, everyone expected that if you ever got caught and needed to surrender, but torture…

They didn’t warn you that was a possibility.

Still, he guessed he got lucky, especially compared to the others.

He knew the war had fucked him up, just like it fucked up anyone who fought; soon enough it would fuck up Steve too – one of the many reasons why Bucky had wanted to keep him as far away from the recruitment offices as possible – but there was nothing he could do about that now.

For all the times he had tried to protect Steve from the worst the world could offer back home, he now couldn’t do anything to shield him any longer.

The boat was cheered on the quayside when it arrived back, people turning out to cheer home the welcoming soldiers – families reunited, lovers reuniting with a kiss, before being swept away to Camp Lehigh for everyone still standing to receive their final orders.

Bucky didn’t remember most of it – just that he was reminded that the fate of the Allied war efforts rested partly on Captain America’s efforts and confidentiality was key and then there was a short ceremony where they pinned some badges and medals onto his jacket while his parents and sister sobbed happily in the background – and then it was over.

He was a free man.

He could go anywhere, do anything. He had nothing. Nothing to do – the army didn’t want him anymore. Nowhere to go – his and Steve’s possessions had been left with his sister when Steve shipped out with the USO and the apartment they were staying in had been re-let. No one left to talk to – it wasn’t until the prospect of long days spread out before him that he realised that without Steve, he had relatively few friends. So much of his time before he was enlisted was spent either caring for Steve or keeping his jobs so they didn’t starve or fixing the apartment windows so they didn’t freeze in winter when the cold winds came, that he hadn’t realised how isolated it was. Sure there was his parents and his sister, but he hadn’t lived with them in years.

Most of the time it was just him and Steve against the rest of the world.

Now it was just him.

It wasn’t until later that evening that he realised that at some point of the day, he had agreed to stay with his sister and her roommate for a while until he could find a job and somewhere to live for himself.

He lived on Becca’s couch for two months. He didn’t even remember what was happening in that time. He would wake up every morning, wash up and then go out walking. He didn’t have a destination; he would just prowl around Brooklyn for hours until the slam of a bin or a car back-firing or someone brushing too close to him would send him nearly sprinting back to the apartment where he was sit on the fire ladders smoking until the shaking stopped.

Eventually, as understanding as his sister was, she put her foot down and told him to find a job to either pay his share of the rent and bills or find somewhere to live by himself.

It was only when he looked closely at her that he could see the worry and stress in her eyes when she looked at him and cursed himself for becoming a burden on her. Drawing her into a hug, Bucky buried his face into her neck.

“’M sorry, Becks. I don’t mean to be a pain.”

She nudged him playfully in the ribs. “You’re not a pain. I’m just worried about you is all.” She pulled back so she could see his face. “You know you can talk to me about anything, right?”

Bucky smiled sadly at her. “I know. I’ll go and see if I can find some work tomorrow.”

He pressed a kiss to her forehead and then retreated back to the couch for the night, deliberately ignoring her worried look.

For once, luck struck and he found work the second day of looking at a garage belonging to a friend of his uncle. Ben Lewis was a decent man who had lost his only son in the attacks on Pearl Harbour. He had also fought in the Great War so he knew not to walk behind Bucky or touch him unless the other man saw him coming.

It wasn’t a bad living. With most of the skilled workers currently on the front, they didn’t have much in the way of competition and there was something satisfying about spending a day quietly fixing cars, bikes and whatever else with his hands. It quietened his mind. It was good honest work.

After a few weeks, he had enough money to move out from under Becca’s feet and into a tiny apartment of his own.

It was lonely, but it was for the best.

Mostly, he just tried to keep his head down and get on with life. Work – home – work – home. Day after day. Trying to get by until the end of the war, trying every day to get up and keep going so he didn’t just lay down on the floor and scream.

Despite his best efforts though, the war – and Steve – haunted him everywhere he went. On the streets, on the radio, talking to clients (although Ben mainly did that part after Bucky had nearly attacked a smartly-dressed man with a wrench for clapping him on the back right over one of his scars), in newspapers and comics sold everywhere on the street.

There was Captain America taking down a Nazi base. There was Captain America helping wounded soldiers into the back of a van. There was Captain America laughing with his Howling Commandos – Bucky had rolled his eyes at the name. And there was Captain America saluting the brass seriously, Phillips in the background along with Carter.

Bucky had to remind himself sometimes that he wasn’t going to get himself locked up in a sanatorium somewhere by running down the road and trashing the newsies’ stands.

But life went on, in a fashion anyway. Nothing like what he’d had before.

And Steve… Steve kept on too.

Not a week went by when Bucky didn’t receive a letter from him – mostly redacted of course – telling him all about which part of Europe he was in, what he and the rest of the now-named ‘Howling Commandoes’ were doing and how much he hoped that Bucky would write back to him.

And each letter stirred up a strange combination of resentment and relief in Bucky that he hated.

Relieved that Steve was okay, and resenting that not only had been forced to return to America, but he was now obviously being watched given that the letters arrived without fail at his new address.

He refused to admit that he still felt a pang of hurt at not being trusted to be there watching Steve’s back.

Each letter ended with Steve’s wish that Bucky would write back – would let him know that Bucky was alright and happy and comfortable.

And each time, Bucky would read the letter and then throw it on the kitchen table and retreat to sit in the corner of his bedroom – which had the best sightlines – and sit and shake out a combination of misery and guilt and loneliness. Because he wasn’t alright, he wasn’t happy, he wasn’t comfortable. He was just… existing. Just getting by once day at a time. It almost made him feel like he was betraying Steve and that just made him resent his best friend even more. So he never replied even though his brain – and sometimes his sister – told him he was being an idiot.

He was… being an idiot.

But the war had left its mark on him in more ways than one and sometimes he felt like his bitterness was the only thing still holding him together.

Until it all fell apart.

It was another normal day – wake up, go to work, fix cars – and he was working quietly in the back of the garage when he heard the shouting.

Concerned Bucky looked up and saw Ben peering out of the door.

“What’s going on?”

Ben shrugged and leaned further out. “Some kind of commotion down the road by the newsstand. Everyone’s gathering around. Must be some news about what’s happening in this Godforsaken war.” Ben grabbed a rag from a hook near the door and wiped his hands. “I’ll go and find out.”

He disappeared from the doorway and against his better judgement, Bucky’s curiosity was peaked. Clambering out from under the Buick he was working on, Bucky sidled over to the open garage door sticking to the shadows.

The commotion was further down the block – not quite audible enough, but it was clear that something terrible had happened. People were running to the newsstand, men were looking gravely solemn, women were clutching at their chests, clinging to one another and more than one child was standing wailing, fat tears rolling down their faces as they screamed their unhappiness out to the world.

Frowning, he took a step away from the protection of the garage, then another, then another; his brain trying to frantically categorize the reactions of the people and work out what was happening.

Amidst all the people, he spotted Ben emerging from the mass, newspaper held aloft in his hand. Bucky almost smiled at the victorious, tight grip on the paper that he had until he noticed his expression.

He looked devastated, his face grey, mouth open in shock. He was unsteady on his feet as he made it back to the garage, almost falling towards Bucky who gripped his forearms to steady him.

“What is it? What’s happened?”

He guided the older man to the seats they kept for clients and gently pushed him to sit.

“What’s happened Ben?”

The newspaper was rolled up the wrong way, showing the sports pages instead of the headlines. Bucky searched the other man’s face frantically for the answer to his distress.

Ben gasped, trying to draw breath as he recovered from the excitement.

“It’s Captain America…”

Every part of Bucky’s body went cold and he felt like he was floating very far away as the other man spoke.

“Captain America,” he repeated. “He’d dead.”


	8. And dance with me

**2012**

Natasha didn’t reply for over two days. Chatter on SHIELD’s comms based her aboard one of the helicarriers, but other than that, all he was getting was radio silence.

Settling in for the long wait, he switched one of his monitors onto a 24-hour news site and then hacked into SHIELD and amused himself by going through their most recent files. The baby agent had finally re-set his password, but it was easy enough to use old, forgotten Hydra codes to access the backdoors into SHIELD’s network.

Most of the information he found was what he expected – Project Pegasus, Mojave base compromised, Avengers Initiative protocol begun, a flight log showed that Romanova had been flown yesterday to Kolkata…

The last one made him pause. While on the one hand, he was glad that the Widow was out of Moscow – now there was a place that could send both of them crazy – there was something about Kolkata that triggered a warning flare in his mind.

He swung out of his chair as it came to him and he slammed his fist through the wall. “Son of a bitch!”

There were very few things that little Natalia was afraid of and that fucker Fury had thrown her right into the path of one of them.

He was sure that deep down Banner was a good guy… or as good as anyone could be…but Bucky had seen first-hand the damage his alter-ego could cause and Natalia was a lot more breakable than Harlem.

He panted as adrenaline at his sudden rage coursed through his body and forced the emotion down. If there was one thing that his training had taught him, it was that emotions got in the way of successful missions. They were undesirable. And while for the most part, he was able to shove his feelings down – an easy task since he generally struggled to feel very much towards anything at all after so long – he had a few rather large blind spots that just raised it all to the surface.

Bucky inhaled sharply through his nose and then breathed slowly out through his mouth, calming himself.

Immediate chatter put her on the helicarrier so she was safe, no matter where she had been or who she had met.

He would just have to remember to fill in the hole in the wall before she next decided to drop by unexpectedly. It wouldn’t do for her to see the outcome of his rage…or to even suspect that he might have feelings that could be manipulated. She was already far too able at doing that in the first place.

It was hard to remember that thought about an hour later when he received a text from an unknown number with a link full of random letters and numbers attached. Clicking on it got him eyes on the SHIELD mainframe and it was there that he saw the problem in big, red letters.

_Fucking Barton!_

Well that explained everything.

Information was scrolling across the screens he used to maintain his surveillance now at a rapid pace. There had been sightings of both Barton and the Asgardian in Germany. A strike team had been dispatched. And…

Oh look, right there on his TV screen he could see Steve – in what looked like a horrendous parody of his USO Captain America outfit – getting the shit kicked out of him in Stuttgart on the news.

He automatically catalogued the weaknesses he could see as Steve and…Loki… grappled in front of the crowd. Steve was slow, out of practice. He had the brute force to land some hits but not the speed and foresight to avoid those that Loki was landing.

Bucky frantically checked the timer on the news and noted that there was a five-minute delay in the transmission of the footage – the rather shaky camera-work indicating that this was some chump with a cellphone’s lucky day – which was a slight relief. Even in this day and age, no-one would dare to air Captain America’s live death on TV and given that the world hadn’t ended yet, he could make the assumption that the fight had ended the way it was supposed to.

On the screen, Steve and Loki traded blows but it was clear that Loki had the skill, strength and whatever the fuck was coming out of that staff thing on his side. The quinjet hovering in the air above the fight swung around and he noted the flash of red hair in the pilot seat.

Still, it was almost a relief when a third party – the younger Stark – shot into the fight, blocking a blow that Steve would have stupidly taken and subduing Loki – not that Bucky trusted the easy surrender for a moment.

And then it was all over.

A short report was filed to say that everyone was headed back to the helicarrier and Bucky sat back in his seat, musing over what he had seen.

Loki was obviously dangerous and so was that staff thing of his. Stark had obviously been alerted to the situation and decided to throw his oar in and Bucky was sure that he would have control of the situation as long as he didn’t let his ego get in the way. He briefly noted Banner’s presence on the helicarrier, but figured that the man wasn’t a concern as long as he kept a tight grip on the monster inside…and kept his distance from Natalia.

And Steve was… Well, the man had stormed a factory by himself with just a pair of tights and a wooden shield and it had all worked out. Bucky would just have to hope that that luck and whatever skills in fighting he’d learnt since then held out against this new threat.

It took a while before the quinjet was logged as having docked at the helicarrier and Bucky tracked the security cameras as they recorded the occupants offloading their prisoner.

There was something about Loki that Bucky just didn’t like. Something about how comfortable he was at being taken prisoner that just didn’t sit right.

The other Asgardian – Thor – was there too and Bucky wondered when they’d picked him up since he definitely hadn’t been a player in Stuttgart. He assumed since he wasn’t in handcuffs that he was there as an ally, but blood runs deep, so he wouldn’t have backed the alien to choose humans over his own kin.

Although they clearly had Loki in their possession, Bucky was trying to work out why Barton still appeared to be missing. Last sightings had put him with the rogue Asgardian and he really didn’t like that the archer had now vanished.

_Talk to me._

Natalia should have debriefed enough by this point that she should be able to open up communications with him.

_Barton still AWOL. Loki in custody. Thor intercepted on the way. Interrogation in the morning._

_Barton?_ He messaged back.

He could almost feel Natalia’s frustration through her text. _Not at site. Loki a diversion for something._ There was a pause and then a second message came through. _Stark and Rogers not playing well together._ That time the frustration was loud and clear.

It explained why Steve was walking around on camera with his shoulders up around his ears. Flashy and rich never sat well with him, especially after growing up and seeing the inequalities between people widen during the Depression. Steve had never played well with those he thought had had all the advantages in life just handed to them without having to work for it.

And Stark had never played well with…anyone. Except maybe Potts and Rhodes.

But then, Howard’s reach was wide and all-encompassing and not always flattering, and he had always shown more interest in the super-soldier he had created rather than the child he had fathered.

Still, Bucky remembered the billionaire as a young boy – wide-eyed and biting his lip to stop from crying out – which always tainted his view of the man as he was now and made him think less harshly of him. Which was why the operative in him had to bite back the man’s smile when his computers beeped and an unexpected message rolled across the screen.

GOOD MORNING SERGEANT BARNES. SIR WOULD LIKE TO EXTEND HIS REGARDS AND CONGRATULATE YOU ON YOUR SURVEILLANCE PROGRAMMING. PLEASE ACCEPT ADDITONAL AUDIO CAPACITIES WITH SIR’S COMPLIMENTS.

A part of him was somewhat proud that the boy’s AI had managed to hack into the system in about ten seconds flat…and while he didn’t appreciate Stark piggybacking onto his surveillance, he could let it go given the audio quality he now had. It was so much easier to spy on people when you didn’t have to lip-read every other sentence.

Still, the surveillance didn’t exactly help when all hell broke loose.

The interrogation, the staff messing with people’s heads, Steve and Stark’s argument – as much as he… whatever his feelings were in relation to Steve, he couldn’t half be a… - and then the attack on the helicarrier by Barton, then…

The Hulk. Natalia.

Bucky’s hands itched from inaction and it was all he could do to force himself to stay in his seat. To keep watching.

It was excruciating.

He could feel his fingers clenching tightly, his nails digging into his flesh hand. His gaze narrowing and focusing on the screen.

He could feel the panic rising as the monster chased Natalia down and swiped her with one large arm.

And then…nothing.

He had never talked to anyone explicitly about the Soldier. About what it felt like to suddenly not be there anymore in your own body and just have nothing but instinct left. Survival. Desire to complete an objective, no matter how, no matter what obstacles were thrown in front of you.

Peggy knew some of it. Mostly information she had guessed over the years from his behaviour. Howard knew even less than that, but Howard, more than Peggy, respected how volatile he could be.

It was like everything that made him Bucky – what was left of him anyway – got shoved down into a tiny little hole deep inside him. All extraneous thoughts, all distractions, all feelings – most of them anyway – just…went away.

Until there was nothing left but the mission.

His fears for Natalia just…vanished. Until all he could see on the screen in front of him was the next move and the next attack.

She had been slammed into a bank of processors and the Hulk was pacing in front of her. The beast was about to charge and the Soldier was internally willing the girl to move, to get up and get out of the tight spot she had found herself in.

Out of the corner of his eye on the other monitors, he registered that Stark and Rogers were now working together and attempting to reboot one of the engines of the helicarrier that Barton had taken out. Barton was busy disabling a second engine and taking out multiple agents with little or no trouble. The hostile Asgardian had escaped but seemed reluctant to remove himself from the room with the cell, which indicated that he was waiting for something.

Romanoff seemed to have rallied, although he could tell that she wasn’t going to be able to move herself out of the way of the beast’s attack in time.

Until…

So, the other Asgardian could come in handy as he successfully diverted the Hulk’s attention from Romanoff.

The Soldier liked Natalia as much as he was able to like anyone. He still wanted to bark at her not to just sit there though. To get up and get moving. To not allow this moment to overwhelm her and leave her vulnerable.

 _Get up_ , he willed her. _Get up_.

A crackle over the audio came out asking for support to take out Barton. Romanoff answered and got up.

The Soldier smiled.

Barton had had it easy when it came to Romanoff before, but he had no concerns about who would be the victor between the two.

He switched his attention back to Rogers and Stark.

The billionaire was flying around outside of the helicarrier so visuals on him were sporadic and unhelpful. Steve, on the other hand, was still visible. The Soldier was reassured to find that the stiffness and slipshod techniques he had displayed opposite Loki in Stuttgart were gone, disappeared as if they had never existed.

For all of Rogers’ flaws, an inability to learn had never been one of them. He vaguely recognised the feeling of satisfaction that gave him to see Rogers succeeding in battle.

A distant boom came from the monitors and seconds later the picture flickered and then disappeared. All audio-visual was gone from the helicarrier, cut off with nothing but static left behind.

The Soldier considered his options. He could wait until all connections between here and the helicarrier were back up and running, he could attempt to predict what Loki’s next move was, or he could prepare and wait for Romanoff to get back in contact.

He armed himself while he waited. He didn’t know what was coming next or what role he wanted to play in this but he wanted to be prepared when it came, no matter what he decided to do about it.

He had told Fury no already, but he could taste the lie of it on the tip of his tongue.

He was going to fight. He couldn’t not.

He had to have Natalia’s back. He had to support her.

He had to have Stev-

Yes. _No_.

He wavered.

It appeared that this feeling was instinctual, even for the Soldier, even when you stripped Bucky away. Put Steve in front of a target and Bucky would want to be there watching to make sure his back didn’t become a target of his own.

Sometimes his instincts annoyed him, especially as Romanoff’s relentless (and cryptic) mission to throw Steve in front of him left him feeling…

_Feelings._

But he would be ready. If there was a sign. So he waited.

And eventually Romanoff sent him a message. A location.

_Stark Tower._


	9. Now...

**1945**

VE Day came and went with barely a notice from Bucky. He didn’t care that there was victory in Europe. He didn’t care that the stupid, fucking war was drawing to a close. He didn’t care…

Well, about anything really.

Mostly, he just felt…numb. Empty.

It was as if all the strings tying him to the ground and to this life had just been cut and he was left drifting along like a vague shadow of himself.

It was like the weeks after he first got off of the boat that brought him home, only worse, because now there really was very little for him left.

For so long his world had revolved around Steve, around keeping him safe, keeping him alive, and as much as he liked to tell himself otherwise, it was as much for his benefit as it was to honour the memory of Sarah Rogers. That was how it always was – Steve started the fights and Bucky finished them for him, and to be honest, the likelihood had always been that Steve would die of pneumonia in his bed with Bucky by his side than any other option.

It was so alien for him to realise that his best friend, his best… everything, had died alone in a plane crash with Bucky stuck in New York miles away.

It broke his heart.

The ugly part of Bucky told himself that Steve wouldn’t be dead if he hadn’t been a fucking traitor who had sent him packing back home so he could prance around with his stupid commandos around the French countryside.

He squashed that part down when it reared its head, the bitterness he had clung to since returning now tempered by his grief.

He could only be grateful that the rest of Brooklyn seemed to be in mourning for their home-grown hero too. It meant he didn’t have to pretend that everything was fine and that this was normal grief he was feeling for a childhood best friend. Instead he was allowed to mourn, to wail, to weep, and nobody thought anything of it. He was Captain America’s friend; it was expected for him to be grief-stricken.

What he didn’t expect was how public everyone seemed to want his grief to be.

He was the man who had stood by Captain America’s side his whole life, the best friend whom Captain America had fought his way through an entire factory of Nazis for. Everyone wanted a piece of him.

Thank God for Tom, who apart from a brusk “You holding up there, son?” never mentioned Steve in his presence again, and Becca, who seemed to have moved in with him and was zealously guarding the door when the papers came around.

Some publicity was expected, especially when Bucky was forced back into his dress uniform, smartened up and dragged to Arlington for a shame of a public memorial as Steve’s next of kin. He accepted the flag and the posthumous silverware and bowed and saluted at the right moments and then went home and drunk until he passed out.

A few days later, he sobered up enough to make the journey with Becca out to Greenwood, where he buried Steve’s medals in the ground between his parents’ graves.

When he got home, he found Carter waiting for him.

She looked…older…than she did in his memory, less self-assured, but still beautiful. Looking at her now, Bucky could begrudgingly admit that he could see why Steve was attracted to her. Bucky could only imagine what he looked like to her.

Especially since he was done trying to put on his mask that everything was okay with him.

He supposed that grief didn’t really suit anyone.

Unlocking the door, Bucky pushed his way inside and immediately made a beeline for the cupboard with his liquor in it. Agent took the open door as the only invitation she was likely to get and followed him to the tiny kitchen, sliding into one of the hard chairs. He poured two glasses of whiskey and set one in front of her before sitting in the opposite seat.

They drank in silence.

It was Peggy who broke it. “Sergeant Barnes-”

“No, not anymore.” He stopped her right there. “I’m no longer a member of the armed forces, Ma’am, I’d prefer it if I could forget the stripes altogether.”

She nodded. A short, jerky gesture. “Mr Barnes…” She must have noticed his internal wince, because she amended herself yet again. “James. I’d like to extend my condolences to you for the loss of Captain Rogers.”

Bucky laughed. He couldn’t help himself. He knew he probably sounded insane, but he just couldn’t make himself stop.

Carter was frowning at him and he fought to regain control of his emotions, coughing several time to bring himself back under control.

“Right… condolences… My thanks to you, Agent Carter, for coming all the way out here to deliver them.” He leaned back and observed the way she was sat perfectly upright in her chair. Resented it. Resented her calm. Wanted to rattle her cage just a little. “Of course, they would’ve been more welcome a month ago when I had to find out from a newspaper that Stevie was dead!” He couldn’t stop the bite of his words and Carter’s cheeks flushed red.

“There was still work to be done,” she announced crisply. “The mission unfortunately doesn’t disappear just because one soldier is lost.”

“Doesn’t it?” Bucky took another swig of his drink and then leaned back to grab the bottle. “Gosh, now, and here I was thinking that Captain America’s sweetheart could never be so cold-blooded.”

Carter didn’t answer, just took a sip of her drink. “We all have our masks to wear in public, Barnes. Not all of us can afford to get rip-roaringly drunk whenever we feel like it.”

Touché.

“I’m sorry,” Carter eventually said. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

Bucky smirked unhappily. “It’s fine. Not like it ain’t true. Feel like I’ve been turning into my old man ever since I got back, just looking for the next bottom of the bottle. Never thought it’d be like this.”

“I don’t think any of us did. Steve was…” She laughed a little. “You know at times I could’ve almost sworn that he was immortal. The way he fought… Everyone and everything else just seemed… less by comparison.”

“Well, I’m sorry I missed that.” The sarcasm hurt him more than it hurt her, he thought.

Carter was watching him closely. “I am sorry, Barnes, that I couldn’t tell you myself.” She reached across to place her hand over his and he didn’t have the heart to shrug her off. “The information got out too fast, there were too many witnesses to what happened, to contain it and let you know before the world found out.”

He nodded. Carter drew back. They drank.

“You know, he talked about you, on the way down.”

Bucky didn’t think he could listen to this. “Agent Carter…”

“He’d sent you so many letters and hadn’t heard back. He was afraid that you hadn’t got them or that you were still angry with him.”

“I was.” It was honest if nothing else. Honesty was all he had left. “It hardly seems worth it now though.” Now that Steve was dead. Now that there was no-one left to resent.

Still, a part of him couldn’t let it go. Death didn’t suddenly turn people into saints and Bucky knew Steve’s sins better than most.

“I loved him, you know,” he threw out there casually, trying his hardest not to tense.

He had known that for a while, even if he had never admitted it out loud before. It made sense though – the people you loved the most always had the most power to hurt you, whether they meant to or not.

He forced himself to meet Carter’s eyes, not sure what he would find there.

Homosexuality was nothing new, of course, and it wasn’t like Carter could get him blue-ticketed out of the army anymore, but still. It wasn’t something you could just _tell_ people.

Once he made eye contact, his worries were relieved. Carter was so unflappable about everything else, it was a relief to find that she took his confession with aplomb.

“I know.” She squeezed his hand and then downed the rest of her drink. He poured her another. “He felt the same way about you.”

Bucky froze. “Don’t. Don’t do that.”

She took another long swallow. “At first I just thought it was because you had been so close growing up. Ca- Steve explained that he hadn’t had many friends when he was young. I thought it might just be a boy’s love.” She spoke very clearly and concisely, with only her grip on his hand revealing that she felt anything other than calm in that moment. “But after you left, when you wouldn’t speak to him, he was so down-hearted that it made me wonder.”

“Agent Carter…” Bucky swallowed, “Peggy.” She looked up at the informality. “Whatever relationship Steve had with me, however we grew up… He loved you.” The truth of what he was saying burned him. “Seriously, he used to talk about you all the time. He was totally blown away by you.” He could tell her this now, tell her the raptures Steve had gone into just from being in her presence, but he couldn’t sit there and hold her hand while he did it. Bucky slid over to the counter and busied himself with stashing the bottle he was still holding. “He was in love with you. Had been since the moment he met you. Never doubt that.”

“I loved him too.” Behind him he heard Carter take a deep breath, then another. Only her shaky inhalations gave away her feelings.

They were frozen in that moment, their cards laid out on the table, united in their grief for the man they had both loved.

And then the moment was over.

Bucky stayed facing away, listening carefully as Carter pushed her chair back from the table and stood up. When she spoke, it was like all had been forgotten.

“Thank you so much for having me, James. I’m terribly sorry that it was in such unfortunate circumstances that we had to meet again.”

He took her cue and ran with it. “Thank you for your visit, Agent Carter.”

“Peggy,” she clarified, offering him a brisk, impersonal smile.

So that was how they were going to do it. Captain America’s best friend and best girl, united in their mourning and their inability to cope.

It was fine. He had gotten used to wearing a mask over the last few years. What was one more act to keep up appearances.

“Peggy,” he confirmed.

They shook hands, perfectly politely.

“Once again, I’m terribly sorry about the delay in communications, but the war, you know?”

“Yes,” he replied mechanically. “The war.”

Peggy nodded and then hesitated as if she wanted to say something else before leaving.

She didn’t.

 

……………………………………………………

Bucky saw her a number of times after that, especially once she had relocated to the SSR office in New York. And although he dodged her hints that he should throw in his towel with the rest of the Howling Commandos now doing espionage work – evidently they were now assuming that if he was crazy, he would’ve flipped out already – he still somehow seemed to be kept in the loop about incidents that he was sure it was in national interests to keep quiet.

So he kept his distance for the most part and stuck to the routines he had established after he had returned from the front.

He wasn’t miserable about it at all, he was just… nothing. Going through the motions.

Still, it was him she called the day after she thwarted some Nazi program to set up Stark for some attack. He met her on the Brooklyn Bridge as requested, wrapped up tightly in a coat, his face shoved deep into a scarf, only for her to hold out a vial of red liquid.

“It’s the only one left. Howard kept it to try and decipher Erskine’s work, but it’s done more harm than good for men to keep trying to create another super soldier.”

It took a moment for Peggy’s words to click and for him to realise what he was actually holding.

He wept a little when they poured what was left of the man they both loved into the river.

They avoided each other for a few years after that.

Carter went away and came back. She left the SSR and her, Stark and Phillips – still puffing away angrily at his cigars – started their own agency. She met someone else, some former soldier, and got married and Bucky was happy for her, happy that despite what she had been through she was still able to feel, to love. He declined attending the wedding, but lurked around the church graveyard and left some flowers on the bonnet of her car.

Through it all, she never breathed a word to anyone about their talk that day. He respected her for that.

He didn’t think they would ever been friends, but they were friendly enough.

And so she was the one he called when he woke up and shaved one cold October morning in ’57 and found himself studying his appearance critically in the mirror.

He looked…good.

Despite the drinking and the lack of proper meals – he had never been a decent cook – and the endless exposure to toxic fumes at the garage, he looked…

Really good.

Bucky knew that he had been too thin when he had returned from the war; his stint as a POW had left him thin and pale-looking and despite the smart clothing and styling he had received in his brief stint as the sniper on Steve’s team, he had never really regained the swagger and flair he’d had before leaving Brooklyn, either mentally or physically.

But even if time hadn’t really healed the wounds inside his head, it had apparently been doing its work on his physical appearance.

His skin had a healthy, rosy flush to it, his hair was thick – no sign of a receding hairline – and his eyes were bright. His skin was clear and smooth and…

He paused in his assessment.

Too good. He looked too good.

He had turned 40 this year. He had fought and been experimented on during the war. He wasn’t exactly living clean.

Where were the wrinkles? Where was the onset of age spots? Sure he had some fine lines on his face, but those were from his expressions, not from the ravages of time. Surely they should’ve deepened by now.

He cast his mind about, trying to mentally picture other people. Ben’s hair had gradually turned white in the thirteen years since Bucky had first met him – turning most of the day-to-day running of the garage over to Bucky once arthritis had begun to kick in. His sisters and their families were visibly getting older, as were his parents. Becca had even started complaining about finding grey strands in her hair and she was a good five years younger than him.

_Hair!_

Bucky immediately began to search through his hair for any sign that it was losing its colour.

Nothing.

He was 40 and he didn’t a look a day older than…

Than…

Dawning panic started to rise.

Than the day he had stumbled out of Hydra’s factory in Austria.

He thought back. Those days and weeks immediately after his rescue were mostly a blur, but he still recalled his rage, his unnatural skill with a rifle, how he had healed relatively quickly, how Howard and Peggy and Steve had looked at him sometimes…

Bolting out of the bathroom, he stumbled towards the phone that Becca had insisted he get once she had moved away, “so I can at least have some confirmation that you’re not starving yourself to death, Buck,” and dialled the telephone number that Peggy had slipped him during one of their infrequent meetings ‘in case of emergencies’.

He spoke to the operator and listened to the series of clicks, each one sounding more ominous than the one before, as they put him through to Peggy’s office.

“Carter,” he rushed out as soon as she answered. “I think there’s a problem with me. That factory back in the war… I think they might have done something.”

He could tell that Peggy wasn’t sure whether or not he was just in the middle of the breakdown he’d been threatening to have to since 1943, but she agreed to send two of her agents to pick him up and bring him to SHIELD headquarters so she could speak to him in person.

In the end it was all for nothing though.

By the time the agents had knocked on the door twice and then broken it down, he was gone.

And Bucky Barnes, Captain America’s best friend, who went to war and returned safely home, was no more.


	10. ...and Forever

**2012**

The message was like a call to arms.

Within ten minutes, he was ready and out of the house, loaded up to fight.

He had no idea what he was going to face out there so the Soldier prepared for every eventuality.

Bulletproof vest. Holsters. Guns. Knives. Grenades. A rocket launcher that he stashed in a bag with yet more weapons. Garrotting wire. Several smaller, more homegrown explosives. Chemical vials.

He left his metal arm bare apart from his gloves though. He fought better with it uncovered and more than once just the sight of it had been intimidating enough to make his enemies think twice about engaging with him, not that he thought it would help in this instance.

His mask and goggles went on too. He could never be too careful about protecting his identity, especially when he was fighting and the mask’s ability to filter air was useful, no matter that the last time he had worn it when fighting alongside SHIELD operatives, Barton had said he looked like a ‘pimp assassin’.

Getting into Manhattan was easy once he had raided the garage for his bike, especially if you used the sidewalks as additional lanes.

Two blocks out from Stark Tower, he heard a number of screams as a small figure appeared to fall from the near the top of the building. He sped up his approach, not that he thought he could do anything in time.

Luckily, moments later the figure was followed by a red rocket-style machine that opened up into a suit. Looked like Stark was in the game.

Unfortunately, so was Loki as a bright, blue light shot up into the sky, creating a gaping hole that bled space and monsters into the world.

The bike skidded to a stop as the Soldier’s brain froze, his feet automatically slamming down on the ground for support.

That light. He knew that blue light.

A ripple of something that felt like Bucky Barnes was screaming in the back of his head, telling him to run. But he couldn’t. He never ran.

No matter that every instinct was telling him to.

A swarm of aliens surged down the street heading towards him and the now screaming civilians trying desperately to get away.

The incoming attack snapped his brain back online.

The Soldier pushed down any feelings he had about anything and unhooked a machine gun from the holster across his back.

Now this he could deal with. He’d leave it to Stark and the others to deal with the glowy light.

He sprayed the first wave of aliens with gunfire and then began sprinting towards the tower. He needed to get to high ground as quickly as possible, to get closer to the source of the attack and to provide some cover for Stark who was the only… Well, he had been the only one around trying to do anything until the allied Asgardian appeared from nowhere.

Ducking into a nearby building, he sprinted to the top as fast as he could, pushing aside fleeing occupants as he went and emerged onto the roof. In that time, some…

He had no words to describe them. Giant beasts maybe?

…had emerged from the portal in the sky and were crashing into everything in sight, dropping off hoards of the other smaller aliens as they flew down the narrow streets.

Stark was flying around like a dervish, shedding missiles like they were going out of style and there was a quinjet in the air now, targeting the creatures gunning for Stark. Looked like Natalia was back in play.

The soldier made his way to the edge of the roof and immediately began to take out the creatures that were attacking civilians on the streets.

It all became a blur after that: identify target, aim, shoot, reload when necessary.

Some of the aliens clearly recognise that they were being attacked from one of the buildings, but the Soldier kept moving every time he emptied a clip.

At some point, the quinjet was shot down and Natalia and Barton emerged shooting, along with…

Oh, there he was. Shield in hand. Righteous fury. Oddly acrobatic moves.

The Soldier took out three aliens that were advancing on the trio and ignored Steve’s confused look around.

The three on the ground moved to protect civilians with Stark and Thor taking on those creatures flying around and the Hulk – who had appeared while the Soldier was taking out a lucky alien who was trying to attack him – went after the larger beasts.

The Soldier fell back on what he was used to: sniping.

While the odd team fought back against the enemy, the Soldier watched their backs, taking out anything that got too close.

Steve and Thor looked confused by the aliens around them suddenly dropping dead, but clearly either Natalia or Stark, who had saluted him merrily on one of his fly-bys, had informed them that he was a friendly because they stopped trying to look for him.

A couple of the aliens made it up to him on his various perches, but for all their height, they weren’t any stronger than anything he’d had to fight before so it was easy enough to just focus on mowing down as many of them as possible, resorting to his knives when the guns just weren’t getting the job done efficiently enough.

The whole fight was one big blur really, interspersed with moments of clarity where everything suddenly seemed to focus in front of his eyes before he was back to the next moment, the next enemy, the next problem.

Thor and the Hulk working together to take down one of the flying monsters.

Barton evacuating a busload of civilians.

Tossing a spare gun down to Natalia when she ran out of clips.

And Steve.

Always one eye on Steve, watching his six. Old habits died last, he guessed.

He wasn’t very impressed to see that the other man’s recklessness hadn’t diminished during his time in the ice.

A couple of times he had to descend into the chaos of the streets and he let his instincts guide him, cutting and slashing and gunning his way through the enemy until he was able to get a better vantage point again.

A few times he fought close enough to the other that he was sure that they saw him, or at least registered another presence fighting alongside them, but none of them tried to stop him or expected him to actually fight alongside them.

And then there was a black blur – a missile – intercepted by Stark and guided up through the portal until all the aliens just dropped, like someone had just screamed a trigger word inside their brains. After all the noise, all the chaos, the sudden silence was disconcerting.

He didn’t drop his firearm, that would be stupid and reckless, but he did take a moment to breathe as he waited for Stark to fly back through the portal.

Except he didn’t, and it was closing. Then a red figure was tumbling down, unable to stop.

The Soldier was too far away to do anything – always too far away, never able to reach – but he jumped off the side of the building he was currently on, using his metal hand to dig into the concrete and guide his descent, before he sprinted towards where he thought Stark would land.

It was like running through a ghost town.

Bodies – both human and alien – were scattered all over the place and there was that strange hum of silence lying over everything that he knew from experience wouldn’t last for long.

Soon the screams would start and panic would descend once more. He wanted to be out of the way long before that.

But first… Stark.

He breathed a sigh of relief when the man was caught by the green beast and lowered onto the road, lurking in the shadow of a building. He would never admit it though. The Soldier couldn’t afford to feel things, especially when the chances of not surviving attacks like this were so high.

But he couldn’t help it that when Stark breathed, he breathed a little easier too.

He checked them off in his head as he saw them.

Stark. Thor. Banner. Steve.

Always Steve.

Romanova was rappelling down from the top of Stark Tower and in the distance, he could see Barton continuing to clear civilians from the immediate area now the worst had passed.

He could feel the Soldier relaxing its grip on his brain, allowing everything else in his head to start spilling over. He had fought with Steve again, watched his six again; it was achingly familiar.

And just as painful as he remembered.

He knew he needed to get out of there and get back to the relative safety of his home before he let his mask down. He turned to leave and got halfway down the block before he heard footsteps running towards him.

Spinning, he raised his gun and sighted the figure running after him.

Steve!

Of course it had to be him.

“Hey! Hey!” The other soldier ran after him. “Wait up.”

Against his better judgment – which was currently screaming at him – Bucky stopped and waited.

Steve looked… good. Better. Much better than the last time Bucky had seen him, although he supposed that wasn’t hard given that the last time he had seen him in person had been the time on the subway when Steve had just looked…

Well, he shoved the guilt down. Romanova’s words about how much better off Steve would be if he had Bucky around were ringing in his head. Speaking of Romanova, he could see her lurking in the distance, clearly not able to contain her curiosity.

Up close, he could see that Steve was sporting an impressive number of cuts and bruises and was heavily favouring his left leg. His fingers twitched, wanting to immediately start patching him up.

Some habits were hard to shake.

“I just wanted to say good job out there,” Steve began.

No, not Steve. Captain America. This was his professional soldier persona talking now.

“You really helped the team out of a tight spot and I appreciate it.”

He held out a hand for Bucky to shake and he hesitated at the gesture. Steve kept his hand out despite Bucky’s hesitation, seeming to search his face for clues about how to react to this stranger. Not that he could see much. Thank God for the masks he wore in combat. His gaze on Bucky after all this time was discomforting though. There was a slight hesitation when his gaze took in the metal arm, but Bucky was used to that and after a split second, Steve seemed to just absorb the information, like he probably had all the other new stuff thrown at him over the last few days.

Eventually Bucky stuck his hand out and quickly shook Steve’s, just so that he could escape that look.

He turned away sharply, breaking Steve’s grip and stalking off.

This was too much, it was all too much.

He was too on edge from all the stress of watching events unfold on the helicarrier and not being able to do anything about it and from the fighting itself. He felt like all his nerves were exposed, and talking to Steve was just exacerbating the situation. He needed to get out of there.

“We’re going for food,” Steve called after him. “It would be great if you could…”

“Save it, Cap,” Natasha interrupted. “He doesn’t play well with others.”

He could’ve killed Natalia if her words hadn’t made Steve stop following him. Of course, it didn’t help that then she started following him afterwards, but he could forgive her for that. Him and Barton were the only certainties in her life – she liked to make sure they were undamaged. Although given that Barton was the one who had been compromised throughout this whole thing, he was sure that he would be on the receiving end of Natalia’s idea of care.

He made it all the way back to his abandoned bike before she spoke.

“You’re leaving?”

He nodded sharply. “Need to get out before I end up on Facebook or some such crap.”

He knew it wouldn’t be long before people’s self-preservation instincts ran out and they’d be only too keen to document their experiences of the fight online. He didn’t want to be around for any of that.

“You know he means well, right?” she continued talking. “You fought with us. It’s only fair that you join us for food.”

“Food?”

“Schwarma.” She rolled her eyes. “Stark saw a place nearby that sells it.”

“Have fun.”

He lifted the bike from where he had left it and swung a leg over the seat.

“Yasha,” Natalia sighed. “Can you at least take the mask off while I’m talking to you? You know I hate having a conversation with you like this.”

His lips quirked into a smile beneath the mask. “I know you do.”

She huffed. He half expected her to stomp her foot, but of course, she would never express a loss of control over her feelings like that.

“Go. Eat with your fellow ‘Avengers’.” Even he could hear the quote marks he put around the name. “Sort out Barton. Worry about me after.”

She frowned, clearly not happy with him.

“Take the mask off, Yasha. I want to see your expression before you go.”

“Worried about me?” It was teasing, but he understood the compulsion. He had already catalogued all of her injuries. She would live. “Fine.”

He yanked the goggles off and then unhooked the mask, wanting to get this over before the streets became crowded once more.

Natalia studied his face swiftly but carefully. “You look tired.”

“You always tell me that I look tired, Natashenka. Now, you’ve had your look, so why don’t you-”

“Bucky?”

He froze. Everything froze.

“Bucky? Is that… Are you….?”

The words were stuttered, incredulous, and as Bucky’s raised his eyes beyond Natalia, coming from exactly the person that he was trying to avoid.

Either Steve had become sneakier since his re-emergence or Bucky had been set up.

From Natalia’s smirk, it was the latter.

Steve, on the other hand, wasn’t smirking. He looked… Well, he looked like he had seen a ghost. Pale, disbelieving… hopeful.

“Bucky,” he said again. “Is that… Is that you?” He stepped forward, before his eyes fell to Bucky’s left side. “Your arm…”

Bucky felt like a deer in headlights, unable to move, unable to respond. There was just him and Steve staring at each other, looking at each other face to face for the first time in over 70 years.

Despite the hesitation over his arm, a slow expression of joy began to cross Steve’s face and he took another step forward, raising one hand. “Bucky!”

His next step forward broke the spell Bucky was under and he suddenly realised how fucked over he was.

He needed to run to Steve. He needed to run _from_ Steve. He needed… He needed…

“Yasha?” Natalia’s voice cut through the haze and brought everything into stark relief.

It reminded him of what he was now, of what Steve was now and of how different they were and had been ever since he had been yanked up off of that cold metal table in Austria and into a different Steve’s embrace.

He needed to leave.

Now.

He switched the engine on and yanked the bike around so he couldn’t see Steve and then revved the engine.

“Bucky?” Steve sounded more panicked now, but he ignored that. He had to get out of there now. If Steve was really that upset at seeing him after all this time, he was sure that Romanova could deal with it. She seemed to be dealing with everything else.

For only the second time in his life, Bucky turned his back on Steve and left him behind.


	11. I'm Your King

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for sticking with me til the end.
> 
> Thank you once more to Kit for the beautiful artwork and Bo for the beta-ing.
> 
> I very hope you've enjoyed reading this story.

**2012**

It was very easy to hide. Bucky had been doing it for so long now that it was almost second instinct. Of course, it was made easier by the fact that only two people knew where he lived, and only one of those ever bothered to flaunt that knowledge.

Fucking Romanova.

He had told her, time and time again that he wasn’t interested meeting Steve, in letting him know that Bucky was still around, and yet, what did she do? Force a confrontation.

She was lucky he had been too dumbstruck at the time by that look on Steve’s face to strangle her.

He made up for it in the weeks after the so-called Battle of New York by making his building as Widow-proof as possible. It amused him the first couple of times she tried to break in but couldn’t.

He knew it wouldn’t last forever, sooner or later she would manage to worm her way past the defences he had set up and then he would have to make a decision about whether or not he was going to have to move on to somewhere less… less.

Which all added up to the subject he was trying to avoid.

Steve.

So here he was, sat on his sofa, chain-smoking and trying to make a decision about what he wanted to do.

Steve knew he was alive. Steve had _seen_ him, standing there like an idiot.

So it was no longer a question of whether or not he wanted Steve to know if he was alive or not. It was now about whether or not he wanted to have more contact with Steve now that Steve was aware that he _was_ alive after all these years.

Bucky thought he preferred the first dilemma. It was much less messy.

He hated Steve.

No, that wasn’t quite right.

He hated what Steve had done to him. He hated the choices that Steve had made that had led him to this moment, to this time.

God, sometimes he longed for death, longed for a normal life. Surely if he had carried on as he was with Steve, he would’ve either died in the war or, if he’d survived, lived out his life like the rest of Steve’s men.

That was unfair though.

The damage to Bucky had already been done by the time Steve had pulled him off that table. That would’ve made no difference.

It was just…

It was just he was so mad at Steve. He was mad and he was… hurt.

Steve had left him behind. Left him all alone while he ran off being the big war hero and getting himself killed and leaving him to just…flounder.

All of Bucky’s life it had been him and Steve against the world and all of a sudden Bucky wasn’t part of Steve’s world anymore, he wasn’t considered good enough to be part of Steve’s world. And he had been turned aside and rejected while more _worthy_ people, people that were still bright, still shining, people that hadn’t been run down and spat out, took his place next to Steve while he was shipped off back home to be hidden away in some grungy apartment block.

A splash of water against his shirt had Bucky impatiently brushing away the tears that had somehow run unbidden down his face.

He couldn’t afford to feel, didn’t want to feel, because the last time he had, he had felt too much and been cut loose for his efforts.

Who was Bucky compared to all the golden, glorious people that Steve could have in his life?

He was nobody. He was nothing. And it hurt.

Worse than any injury he had ever received. Worse than having electricity course through his brain erasing every part of him that matter. Worse than waking up one day and not recognising who you are or why a part of you no longer exists, but has been replaced with metal and wires, because God knows a machine can bring world order about a lot easier than a man who might have feelings about the whole thing.

Worse than… worse than…

Worse than crying out for Steve because he was the only person you had ever relied upon, could ever reply upon, wanting him to come and save you one last time.

Only to realise that he wasn’t coming. He was never coming.

Because he had turned you away.

Because he had left and was never coming back.

…except he had come back.

He had come back and he wasn’t the same. But then, neither was Bucky.

Neither was Bucky.

So where did they go from there?

It seemed so silly now, to cling onto the bitterness he had first felt all those years ago when Steve had first formed his team around him and Bucky had found himself out in the cold. So silly. Especially over something that had happened so long ago.

But that bitterness had bred Bucky’s rage and it was rage, not compliance, which had assured his survival for so long.

It was raging against the world, against Steve, against the government, against Department X, against SHIELD, that had kept him alive.

 _Do not go gentle into that good night_ and all that.

That bitterness, that rage, was the reason why he was still here. It was why Peggy was still here and kicking. It was why Natashenka had lasted so long. It was why Stark hadn’t wilted and withered inside that Afghan cave.

Steve didn’t have that. He had never had that.

And so he was vulnerable, he was exposed and it was why, despite everything, he had sent Bucky home all those years ago.

Bucky didn’t know if he could forgive him for that. He didn’t know if he had it in him.

If four sisters had taught him anything, it was how to bear a grudge.

He mulled it over, taking drag after drag from his cigarette. Lighting the next one as soon as each was burnt down to its stub.

A flicker from his security systems caught his attention, letting him know that Natalia was about to try and break into his apartment again. He briefly contemplated shooting her this time for real, but in the end settled for grabbing a jacket and gloves to cover his arm and heading out of the emergency exit he had painstakingly carved one summer into the wall and down through the subway system.

He grabbed a train and then followed the largest crush of people he could find up to the street where he wandered aimlessly.

He had two options really as far as he could see: Steve or No Steve? Forgiveness or no forgiveness?

He stopped dead in his tracks.

A life of living alone, hiding away from everyone, or a life with the only man Bucky had ever loved, no matter how messed up his memory of that feeling was and no matter that he had no idea what Steve even thought about him after all these years.

Bucky stopped dead in his tracks and looked up. The entrance for Greenwood was right in front of him. God! He hadn’t been here since…

Since he had buried those stupid medals in 1945.

Unbidden, his feet followed the old, familiar pathway between the gravestones to where Joseph and Sarah Rogers were interred.

He hesitated at the sight of a familiar figure kneeling in front of the graves.

Another set of options now lay in front of him: face his past or walk away, possibly for forever.

…………..

He stepped forward.

Steve looked up. “Bucky?”

Then he was in his arms, clinging as tightly as he could, all thoughts and worries gone. Bucky felt everything else melt away.

There was just Steve.

Steve who was here now. Here with Bucky. Not going anywhere if he could help it.

Bucky gripped Steve as hard as he could, burying his face in his neck so the other man couldn’t see his face, couldn’t see the tears which once again pricked at his eyes, even as he felt wetness on his neck from where Steve mimicked his hold.

Holding Steve, Bucky didn’t feel the bitterness, didn’t feel that raging. He only felt peace.

He _felt!_

And so they clung to each other, neither letting go. Two ghosts in graveyard.

Together.


End file.
